Trolls: Gladiola Trollkonge
by Emersonian
Summary: Gladiola Trollkonge, the daughter of Branch and Poppy, is taking a big step into becoming the next Queen of the Trolls. But just as her birthday and upcoming coronation approach, old enemies have kidnapped her into another realm: the human realm. As her family and friends struggle to save her, Gladiola must learn to survive with the mid-happy humans, starting with befriending one.
1. Scrapbook Prologue and Royal Birth

Trolls: Gladiola Trollkonge

Chapter 1: Scrapbook Prologue and Royal Birth

( _cue to the opening of a scrapbook picturing the story and the narrator doing the job of narrating)_

Many years ago -like almost past my age, there were a species of adorably, optimistically, colorfully, jovially, and musically incredible creature known as the happy Trolls. For generations, they had lived a fairy tale like life in their home, the Troll Tree, until they were discovered by the Bergens, a bunch of creatures who emotionally foiled the Trolls' constant happiness and for years believed that eating a Troll was their only ticket to true happiness, which is why they caged the Trolls in their tree and would take Trolls from the tree to feed themselves on their 'Trollstice' holiday.

That was until about thirty-eight years ago, the Troll King Peppy hatched a plan to dig underground tunnels beneath the Troll Tree and lead his people and baby daughter, Princess Poppy, far away from the Bergens before any Troll could get eaten. For the next twenty years, they lived a carefree life in their hidden village and Princess Poppy grew to be the happiest, most optimistic Troll that everyone adored.

But what the Trolls didn't know was that, because of their escape, the Bergen Chef in charge of Trollstice was banished from Bergen Town by King Gristle Senior, making her incredibly bitter and vow to get revenge on the Bergen royalty by finding the Trolls and using them to bring Trollstice back. And much to her luck, she found the hidden Troll village due to one of Princess Poppy's loud parties and ended up capturing a bunch of the princess' friends.

So Princess Poppy ended up embarking on an incredibly journey with the village's grey paranoid survivalist Troll, Branch, that involved a living forest, a weird cloud that walked around without shoes, the Trolls helping a scullery maid win the heart of the Bergen King, a traitor who ditched the Trolls to save his hide, and Princess Poppy helping the Bergens find the true happiness that came from within and not from eating Trolls.

Now the Trolls are living back in the Troll Tree, beginning a new era of peace with their old enemies, the Bergen Chef and Creek have been exile and missing for good, and the world has gone extremely happy.

But the best part in this story? Princess Poppy ended up discovering that the grey Troll Branch actually had romantic feelings for her that she ended up reciprocating, and his true colors turned back into being blue. They married a few months later and ruled the Trolls equally as their king and queen.

Just in time for spring to come...

 _The Birth Crops Fields by the Troll Tree, eighteen years ago_

"Easy there now..." Biggie said, guiding Branch and Poppy as the royal Trolls lifted their seed carefully and placed it into the pit they had dug. "There you go!"

"Phew! Talk about heavy lifting!" Poppy wiped off the sweat from her forehead.

"I might not know much about Troll biology, but how come you're burying your babies?" King Gristle Junior asked. He and his girlfriend Bridget had been spending more time with the Trolls now that they were friends, and when they had come to visit them at the Troll Tree this afternoon, they had found quite a number of Trolls digging through a crop field on the East Side of the Tree and placing seeds that were big enough to match the size of one of their infants.

"It's the first day of spring tomorrow," the former King Peppy explained to the Bergens. "Baby Troll births are best in spring, but it's good luck if a baby is born on the first day of spring. _Especially_ a royal baby."

"The parents first lay a Troll seed containing a growing infant using all the happiness and love they are prepared to devote for the child," Biggie continued for Peppy. "After the seed takes a week to ripe, the parents then have to plant it in the Birth Crops Fields and then the baby will be born the next day or so inside a growing, blooming plant."

Branch and Poppy both caressed the seed's shell lovingly. After so many months of happiness, they were finally going to have a baby, a new heir to the Troll kingdom. And how lucky they would be if the new Troll baby happened to be born tomorrow on the first day of spring!

"What kind of plant do you think the baby will be born from, Branch?" Poppy asked her husband as they covered the pit and seed with warm dirt.

"I should hope it's not poison ivy," the blue Troll said. His wife just chuckled and smiled at him, unable to believe that even after all those months, Branch still remained sarcastic despite regaining his colors.

"What kind of plants do baby Trolls grow from?" Bridget asked curiously.

"Well that depends, my dear," Peppy said. "The kind of birth plant is very unpredictable and the nature of the plant is usually essential to naming the born Troll. For instance, when Poppy was born, she was born from a very rare pink poppy flower, which was quite a surprise since Poppy ended up being born pink all over."

"Lucky me!" Poppy said as her hand brushed the soil-covered bit to make it as smooth as a blanket.

"All female Trolls are born from flowers while males are born from any other form or sprout," Biggie said. His arms hugged . "So honestly, there's no way of predicting what kind of Troll we'll end up with."

"I guess we'll have to find out tomorrow..." Branch sighed.

 _The next day, right at sunrise_

Gristle and Bridget woke up from their sleep when a guard burst the doors open of their room, nearly getting his foot eaten by the king's pet alligator.

"Hasn't anyone heard about knocking five hours later?" Gristle complained while Bridget tried to hide her dignity under the covers.

"Your Majesty, it's happening!" the guard said.

"What's happening?"

"The Troll Queen's cowbell is banging. Everyone is rushing to the Troll Tree. The royal seed is about to sprout!"

Without even thinking twice, the Bergens grabbed some clothes to put on and ran as fast as they could towards the Troll Tree, where a big crowd of Bergens were gathered to witness with their Troll friends the arrival of a new baby.

"It's starting!" Satin exclaimed. "Look!"

Everyone watched as a small mass of green leaves began to glow and grow their way out of the Birth Crops Field. "Those green leaves...We're expecting a new princess!" Branch informed the other Trolls, who jumped in excitement at thought of having a new princess after Poppy.

Then, right when the early morning rays hit the green leaves, the flower pod began to glow. It was a lavender colored flower pod with beautiful magenta and sky blue stripes.

"I've never seen such a flower before," Peppy remarked while Branch and Poppy cautiously approached the flower pod that began to open and reveal its petals and the awaked infant it was carrying.

"So what kind of flower is it?" Bridget asked.

"My word..." Peppy gasped. "It's a stripped gladiola. No one has ever seen a Troll from the royal family born from a stripped gladiola in a millennium!"

Everyone was gasping and murmuring in amazement while the Troll King and Queen were more busy taking their newborn daughter from the nectar she had been stuck in for at least five seconds. Branch grabbed two of the stripped gladiola petals in order to use one of them to wipe off the nectar and the other to use as a blanket for his daughter as she was being held by her so-happy mother.

The new princess was such a sight! Her skin was as lavender as the flower she had come from, and like its stripes her hair had magenta and sky blue streaks, which turned out to be her parents' natural hair colors. And her lovely blue eyes were just as lovely as her father's.

"Branch...She's so beautiful!" Poppy cried in happiness as the baby cooed happily in her mother's arms.

"Mama!"

"Yes, that's right! It's mommy! And look, here's..."

"Dada!"

Branch sighed happily at the baby as Poppy passed him into his arms. He smiled at the lavender Troll that was giggling and trying to poke his nose. Now it was time for him, his wife, and Peppy to step up on the platform and present the new princess to everyone.

"Oh my gosh! She's so cute!" a voice was heard among the Troll crowd.

"No Troll or Bergen left behind!" the baby cried out loud happily. This caused a big series of awes coming from the Bergens.

"Fellow Trolls, Bergen friends!" King Branch declared out loud to the big crowd that stood in front of the Troll Tree. "This first day of spring marks the special day of a new arrival!"

"The arrival of our new Troll crown princess!" Poppy joined in as she gave her precious cowbell to her daughter. "Everyone, we give you Princess Gladiola Trollkonge!"

Just like her mother did twenty years ago, Gladiola instantly began to beat her cowbell in musical rhythm, beginning the party at Bergen Town as the sun fully got out of the horizon


	2. Gladiola

Trolls: Gladiola Trollkonge

Chapter 2: Gladiola

 _Eighteen years after the royal birth_

"Years moved on, and as they did the Trolls and the Bergens lived together in happiness and perfect harmony..."

"Harmony..."

"Harmony..."

Eighteen years had passed since the stripped gladiola had bloomed with the Troll princess in it and Gladiola Trollkonge had now grown into a young, healthy, and adored Troll woman. She wore a rain and cloud themed blue dress with a puffy skirt decorated with purple droplet gems that went down to her hips, green sleeves made of see-through gossamer and designed with blue flowers, a rainbow girdle belt that outlined her waist very well, and a pointy color made of blue-gradient leaves. Under her dress, she wore teal leggings and jeweled, vine themed green sandals (unlike the other Trolls, she preferred to walk around in sandals). Her jewelry included two purple bracelets on her left arm, blue flower earrings, and a green tiara similar to the crown her mother wore. A dark blue and teal elastic was used to tie up her magenta and sky blue streaked hair into a rising but elegant ponytail. She was very much her parents' pride and center of happy adoration and everyone in the Troll Tree and Bergen Town adored her. Like her mother Queen Poppy, she was optimistic, brave, and a lover of parties. Like her father King Branch, she was resourceful, aware of her surroundings, and had a sense of occasional sarcasm. Like both of her parents, she had an amazing voice and was very benevolent towards her people and neighbors.

Right now, in the middle of this warm last day of winter, Gladiola was going on her usual weekly visit to the Recreational and Education Center, the brand new Bergen-and-Troll school that was constructed about six years ago. The young children, especially those below six, would get excited whenever Princes Gladiola came over every week to watch over them, contribute to games, teach the small ones how to read and write and sing, and read stories from her handmade scrapbooks while they gathered in a semi-circle to listen to her read.

"And that's why we all live happily ever after together!" a little green Troll girl said as Gladiola finished reading everyone's favorite story, the one of their people's history and eventual friendship, and closed her scrapbook.

"With songs, dances, hugs, collaborations, and peace treaties, you got it!" Gladiola winked at the little Troll as she fluffed the latter's hair teasingly, making the child giggle.

"And parties and storytelling almost once every week!" a young Bergen girl said while high-fiving the green Troll from earlier.

"I wish we'd party and tell stories at every hour," a Bergen boy said in a little sad tone.

"I know you do." Gladiola smiled sympathetically. "But as much as we all love to have fun together, we also have to work together. Because?" She motioned her young audience as if she were an orchestra master.

"Working together makes us stronger!" all the children said together, making the princess smile with pleasure.

"Princess? How come your last name is Trollkonge?" one of the Bergen children asked.

"Trolls have last names that identify their uniqueness," Gladiola said as she walked over to caress the Bergen's cheek. "In the royal family, 'Trollkonge' is the term used to refer to anybody born with royal blood. But since most Trolls' last names are very long and all use the word 'Troll', we prefer to keep things simple by calling everyone by their first names."

"Princess Gladiola, are the mean Chef and Creek still out there?" A blue Troll boy asked, making a reference to the villains Gladiola had talked about in her stories.

"Who knows?" Gladiola said as she picked up the blue Troll in her arms, noticing how his light blue skin nearly reminded her of her father's. "The last thing anyone remembered from them was that they were permanently kicked out of Bergen Town when they accidently dashed off in a burning stew pot. Many like to believe that they either burned to death or got eaten by one of the forest monsters, but like King Branch says, you never know."

"But I don't want them to come back!" a Bergen boy whimpered as he hugged his Troll friends close to him. "Being with my Troll friends makes me happy!"

"Having birthday parties at the arcade!" a Troll boy said in excitement.

"Hot fudge sundaes at slumber parties!" a Bergen girl suggested.

"Staring at your parents while they sleep." A small, wall-eyed Troll in yellow diapers said. Everyone looked at him for his creepy comment that reminded Gladiola of the older brother of the child. Even as an adult, he liked watching his parents and girlfriend while they slept.

Gladiola looked at the classroom's clock and noticed that its arms were indicating the time to be 2pm. "Well, I'd better be off, kids!" Gladiola put her belongings in her hair as Trolls mostly carried their stuff in their big hairy masses. "It was nice seeing you!"

"We'll see you at tonight's party, right, Princess Gladiola?" the green Troll girl asked eagerly. This made Gladiola slapped herself mentally! She had completely forgotten about tonight's party!

"Of course I'll be there!" she said. To hide her anxiousness, she pulled out her precious cowbell given to her by Queen Poppy. "I'll definetly be there!"

She beat her cowbell in rhythm and soon she was dancing her way out of the Recreational and Educational Center and into the streets of Bergen Town getting ready for tonight's party.

Gladiola: _What can I say? I'm just being Gladiola Trollkonge._

 _Woah, oh, oh._

 _If I'm needed, I just have to hear people calling for me, Gladiola Trollkonge._

 _Woah, oh, oh._

With her hair, she swung herself from lamppost to lamppost and helped the Bergens and Trolls set up party streamers so that the streets would look like rainbow arcs were dominating them. All the Bergens and Trolls waved happily in gratitude at the princess as she moved on to helping the others out.

Trolls: _We've all been blessed with such a benediction_

 _That came years ago from a stripped gladiola flower._

Bergens: _We are happy thanks to the princess._

 _Her existence is a gift so priceless._

Trolls and Bergens: _That's why we can hardly wait the hour_

 _Until Princess Gladiola's coronation!_

Gladiola went to the town square where she helped citizens lift up the glittering giant artificial flower pod they were going to use as a disco ball for the party.

Gladiola: _It's just in my nature to help others._

 _I see them all as my sisters and brothers._

 _Their happiness is something really worth seen._

 _I sure hope this will stay that way when I'll be queen!_

All: _Tonight, we shall celebrate!_

 _Tomorrow, our feelings will reciprocate_

 _When we see Princess Gladiola Trollkonge filling our souls._

 _Because by then, she'll be Queen of the Trolls!_

Cooper's daughter, Chandler, and a friend of Gladiola, caught Gladiola right when the latter landed her back and began to carry her like a pony would towards the Troll as the happy crowd made way.

Chandler: _Make the way._

 _It's our day._

 _Glady here's one of a kind._

 _Never knew somebody so kind._

 _Ain't no Troll that don't like her,_

 _And ain't no Bergen wanting to eat her!_

Gladiola: _Don't exaggerate, Chandler._

 _I'm just carrying on the family banner._

Chandler: _Girl, I didn't hear you say that! Yo!_

 _Who's gotta remind who's the best, Gladio?_

They were joined in by more of Gladiola's friends as they made their way to the Troll Tree: Gossamer and Fabric, the respective daughter of Satin and son of Chenille, Petite, the daughter of Biggie, Disco Jam, the son of DJ Suki, Smitten, the daughter of Smidge, Glow Ruby, the daughter of Guy Diamond, and Fuzzbert Jr, the son of Fuzzbert.

Gossamer: _Never have we seen someone so sweet with children_

Fabric: _It's quite a way to win the hearts of every civilian._

Petite: _Who else knows how to grow our crops big and strong?_

 _Who knows how to makes us happy all day long?_

Disco Jam: _No one's ever seen a princess brave and strong_

 _Just like back week when she got a Bergen's head out of the church's gong._

Smitten and Glow Ruby: _She'll be our queen by tomorrow_

 _And she will keep kidding us through._

All: _That's why we can hardly wait without negotiation_

 _Until Princess Gladiola Trollkonge's coronation!_

Everyone was dancing happily in the streets of Bergen Town as Gladiola got off Chandler and made her way towards the Troll Tree, where her parents and grandfather were waiting for her. Flower petals used for confetti were being thrown out of windows in order to practice for tonight's main event. Cooks were putting a diversity of pastries on the tables and artisans were placing the podium for tomorrow's coronation.

Gladiola looked behind her at her people and their Bergen neighbors as they shared their excitement together about the event. Tonight they were celebrating the planting of the stripped gladiola that bloomed and released Gladiola from the seed her parents had planted, and tomorrow, on her eighteenth birthday, she would be crowned Queen of the Trolls.

Gladiola: _I gotta admit, this is worth something to be seen._

 _Tomorrow will be the day I turn eighteen,_

 _But by tomorrow I'll move on from princess to queen._

 _For some reason deep in me, I just don't feel it._

 _I don't think that I can handle this duty to commit._

 _But I can't disappoint them all, see what I mean?_

All: _Tonight, we shall celebrate!_

 _Tomorrow, our feelings will reciprocate_

 _When we see Princess Gladiola Trollkonge filling our souls._

 _Because by then, she'll be Queen of the Trolls!_

Gladiola: _I don't think I'm ready to rule just yet._

All: _Tonight, our hearts will with happiness!_

 _As we celebrate the future of our beloved princess!_

Gladiola: _But my royal duties are hard to forget!_

All: _When Princess Gladiola Trollkonge delights our souls._

 _Because by then, she'll be Queen of the Trolls!_

"Yay! Hooray! Long live the princess!" Gladiola heard the happy Trolls and Bergens cheering from outside, which kind of grew the uneasiness in her as she got inside her family's pod.


	3. An Ancient Gift

Trolls: Gladiola Trollkonge

Chapter 3: An Ancient Gift

"Here she is!" Queen Poppy said in excitement as soon as Gladiola stepped inside the family pod. Confetti exploded from the ceiling and Gladiola found herself in a surprise reception held by her family and their closest Troll friends.

"Hey," she grinned while hiding back her uneasiness. "What a surprise. I didn't expect to see you all here."

"Ain't that the point of a 'surprise', kid?" Cooper said teasingly while Queen Poppy went right away to hug her daughter. Ever since the former decreed that hug time is all the time, none of the Trolls or Bergens included had to wait to hear the bracelets dinging in order to share happiness through hugs, so Gladiola was used to getting so many squeezing hugs from her mother by the minute. Not that Gladiola didn't like receiving hugs at all, but she had inherited a sense of wanting space from her father, who on the other hand, knew to share hugs with his daughter only when it felt necessary.

"Oh, my big girl's going to be queen on her birthday tomorrow!" Poppy said in excitement as she ruffled her daughter's hair. "I'm so happy for you!" Her childhood friends agreed with her in excitement.

"Yay, mom!" Gladiola pulled away from her mother's hugging in order to avoid suffocation.

"Your mom's coronation, along with her and Branch's wedding, followed by his coronation, were events that we could never forget," Peppy said as he put an encouraging hand on Gladiola's shoulder and used his other hand to point his cane at the ceiling. "Soon, it will be your turn to follow the family footsteps of following the old and new Troll traditions!"

"Yeah, about that..." Gladiola got cut off by Satin and Chenille.

"Everybody's so excited to see you reign!" Satin said. "You've done so much to help out the two communities!"

"True, but..."

"Don't worry, Fabric has got everything covered for your new queenly attire!" Chenille cut in. "He's already come up with great ideas for your new tiara!"

"Quit bragging about your son's talents, Chenille!" Satin started to bicker with her sister. "Fabric may have come up with the designs, but my sweet Gossamer was the one who put on the glitter!"

"Hey, kid. Everyone's looking forward to the parties you'll be holding once you become queen!" Cooper nearly screamed in Gladiola's ears while Satin and Chenille continued to bicker with one another.

"And do make sure that Disco Jam acts as DJ in them," DJ Suki joined in. Soon, all the Trolls in the pod were adding pressure to Gladiola about what they were expecting from her once she became the next Troll monarch. Feeling the pressure pushing on her emotions, Gladiola's hair color began to change into deep saturation. Usually, a Troll turns grey whenever they lose hope and feel utter despair, but when their hair turns into a deep saturation, it was a hint that they were beginning to boil with anger. And while the others didn't seem to notice this, King Branch certainly did.

"That's enough!" He shouted loud and clear enough to make the Trolls move out of the way, making space for Gladiola. It was only when he approached his daughter that they all realized that Gladiola was getting frustrated. "Gladiola..." He cupped his hand on his daughter's right cheek.

"I'm sorry, Dad," Gladiola said, tears threatening to come out of her eyes. "I know you're all expecting me to do this, but I just don't think I'm ready to be queen!" She brushed herself away from Branch and ran out of the family pod.

"Oh my gosh!" Smidge exclaimed in her macho voice.

 _Later, on a branch just above the Birth Crops Fields_

King Branch found his daughter sitting on a particular branch that gave an upper view from the Troll Tree of the Birth Crops fields. Ever since the Trolls and Bergens made peace with the Bergens, this area was now more populated with flowers and plants from which Troll babies were born. The blooming flora had proliferated over the years and was now preparing for the first day of spring with great anticipation. Just a few feet away from it, everyone in Bergen Town was getting ready for tonight's party.

"Do you know what's so particular about this branch?" the king asked Gladiola as he sat down next to her.

"I'm going to go with 'it's because you were born right under there and it was the best day of our life'," Gladiola said, pointing a finger at the field bellow them.

"No. This branch was were I lived with Grandma Rosiepuff before she died." Branch turned to look at the tree with Gladiola imitating his gesture. "Our pod used to hang right over there, and I used to love singing right on the spot you're sitting on right now. That was, of course, before she got taken on one fateful Trollstice."

"Oh." Gladiola realized that her father was talking about Great-Grandma Rosiepuff, the one relative she never met but wished she had. Like every Troll of her age, she knew about how Bergens used to eat Trolls once a year out of the belief that eating the colorful creatures was the only way to get happiness the same way you can only make an omelet after breaking an egg. The older Trolls, who lived long enough to witness at least one Trollstice in their childhood, have shared stories with Gladiola and all the other children of both species how Trolls were horrified when the cruel Bergen Chef would randomly pick which pods containing Trolls would be perfect enough to feed a Bergen. But the scariest parts, which even terrified the Bergen children once their race realized their mistake, was that the Bergen Chef had the monstrous habit of ripping young Trolls from their families in order to feed the younger Bergens and ripping unborn Troll babies from their plants or flowers before the flora could even bloom. Gladiola still had the occasional nightmares of what it would have been like for her, living in a dark era where she'd never know when she could be taken from her family or the inverse to be eaten on Trollstice.

Because that's what happened to Great-Grandma Rosiepuff, which is why Gladiola never got to live great, happy moments with her great-grandmother, unlike the few youngsters out there, Troll or Bergen, who were lucky to have at least _one_ relative over a hundred years old and alive.

"Right on this branch, an old happiness died along with my colors." King Branch took his daughter's hand and helped her get up. He then waved his hand down at the happy Bergen Town and flourishing Birth Crops Fields growing at the roots of the Troll Tree. "And right there, a new happiness, along with my revived true colors, was born here." He took Gladiola's cheek and pulled her head gently so that she could look at him, their eyes matching in blue. " _You_ were born, Gladiola."

"Dad..." She hugged her father and could feel him smiling behind her shoulder.

"Come. Your grandfather and I have to show you something."

He unleashed his blue hair, got a hold of the branch, and swung himself down. Gladiola giggled at the sight of her father landing on the solid ground, laughing with a full heart. "Hurry up!"

"Coming!" She imitated her father and swung herself down as if she were hanging on a beautiful blue and magenta ribbon. She landed next to her father, who began to walk her through a serious of grass, clovers, and petunias, until they reached an area of the Troll Tree's roots. Peppy was waiting for them.

"This is the Wall of Kings." Peppy pointed at the side of the tree they were facing. Gladiola dropped her jaw in amazement when she saw that numerous branches were growing upward on the Troll Tree's trunk like vines. Each branch ranged from the oldest being tough and thick to the youngest being thin and fragile, all ranging upward as if to create a vine staircase. "It was created by your ancestors, who each planted a branch to symbolize the beginning of their reign. Like every royal born in your family, you will plant yours to show your destiny as our queen."

"Every royal born?" Gladiola looked at her father. "So that means you don't have one, dad."

"I don't." Branch looked at the youngest, growing branch of the Wall of Kings. Unlike the rest of the branches, which were getting covered by moss over the years, this one in particular had green leaves sprouting from it. "I'm not of royal descent and I only became king after marrying your mother, but _she_ planted her branch on the Wall of Kings."

"But you're an amazing king, Dad." Gladiola then revealed her insecurities. "And so are Mom and Grandpa. But how can I possibly measure up to you? I mean, sure, I do make others happy, but what if the only things I do aren't enough? What if I can't do the rest, along with whatever else is..."

"Gladiola Trollkonge." The princess turned to see her mother the queen swinging down from the branches with her hair and speaking to her daughter with the firm, yet smiling attitude she started to use ever since she gave birth to Gladiola. "There's a difference between restricting yourself within your sole limits and accomplishing what you never knew you could until you stepped up. True, being Queen of the Trolls is not necessarily all fun and games as I learned the hard way when I went through the same phase as you, but as long as you have friends, the people, and those you love on your side, you can accomplish anything."

"Which she most definetly will. I have something else to reveal to you, my sweet grandchild." Peppy took hold of Gladiola's hand and made her climb on top of a mushroom. From the cap, the family could see Trolls and a few Bergens tending to the flowers and plants growing in the Birth Crops Field. Many were looking in excitement as Troll parents planted their seeds in the ground, for spring, the most favorable season for Troll births, was coming tomorrow.

Peppy pointed his cane at one flower in particular: the stripped gladiola from which Gladiola was born. Over the years, the flower had grown taller and bloomed more than one beauty made of lavender petals marked with magenta and blue stripes. If a plant or flower grew in the Birth Crops Fields over he years, it indicated that the Troll born from it was living a healthy life. "Your flower is unique because of the rare stripes on its petals, and you, Gladiola, are one of the few Troll royalties to have come from such a flora."

"Really?" Gladiola asked as she saw the first rays of sunset hitting the stripped gladiola.

"They are very rare flowers that aren't seen very often per millennium," Peppy continued, "and when they do, the Troll royalty born from it earns an ancient present: the Torch of Happiness, an ancient artifact that will grant the monarch leading it the power to lead others to their true happiness. A few of your ancestors, previous Troll Queens, were born from a stripped gladiola and wielded the Torch of Happiness to help others during their reign. Soon enough, the artifact will be yours when you are ready."

"And deep down here, you know you will be," Branch said as he poked his daughter in the heart area, making Gladiola grin.

"Thanks, you guys." She hugged her entire family together. "I'm so lucky to have you."

"We don't even know what we'd be without you." Poppy smiled. "Now, we must all get ready. The party will start as soon as it gets dark outside!"

"I'll join you in a bit!" Gladiola made her way towards the stripped gladiola as soon as her parents and grandfather made their way back to the family pod. Since the party was to commence soon, people were leaving the Birth Crops Field, leaving Gladiola alone to admire the beauty of the stripped gladiola.

"I do wish I can make everyone proud," Gladiola said quietly. A petal suddenly dropped off the flower, leaving the princess enough time to grab it in her small hands. "But am I really worth receiving your gift?" Gladiola looked in a pondering way at the flower before ripping the petal in half and twisting the parts so that she could create two perfect purple bracelets that she used to replace the ones she already had. "I have so many friends around me, but if I could ask for just one thing, it would be a true friend. Someone I could honestly relate to."

The petal bracelets shone in unison as Gladiola left the stripped gladiola along with the Birth Crops Fields in order to walk back to the Wall of Kings.

Gladiola: _I might just be the perfect princess for the Trolls,_

 _And the perfect idol for the Bergens. That's just how it rolls._

 _But deep down, I know there's a trail for me to follow,_

 _It's a truth that I must swallow._

 _It's a road that I can't go alone,_

 _But does it lead to my fateful throne?_

She jumped from the ground and got hold of the tough branches on the Wall of Kings, allowing her to climb it and go higher up the Troll Tree.

Gladiola: _Out there, I just know, there's someone,_

 _A friend unlike anyone_

 _Has ever seen._

 _A true friend for a queen._

 _If I follow that trail out there_

 _With someone to share,_

 _Will I go fulfill my duty out there in the green_

 _Before I become queen?_

 _In this place, I know I make everyone happy._

 _Things are as they should be._

 _On this tree, I have a role to make Trolls happy_

 _And make Bergens smile to set them free._

 _I bring my family pride,_

 _And I got friends on my side,_

 _But my heart's thoughts shiver my hair._

 _Who's my truest friend out there?_

Gladiola now stood at the highest branch of the Troll Tree, where she now had a perfect view of the entire Bergen Town and the mysterious land surrounding it as the sun got closer to disappearing.

Gladiola: _Is my true friend past where the sun sets?_

 _Will I ever know?_

 _Maybe not now, but maybe I will tomorrow!_

 _I just know we'll do so much together._

 _We'll fight through the harshest weather,_

 _Climb the tallest mountains,_

 _Sail across the stormy seas' shouting,_

 _And be the duo with no regrets!_

 _Out there, I just know, there's someone,_

 _A friend unlike anyone_

 _Has ever seen._

 _A true friend for a queen._

 _If I follow that trail out there_

 _With someone to share,_

 _I know I'll fulfill my duty out there in the green_

 _Before I become queen!_

 _Meanwhile, just outside of Bergen Town_

A pair of binoculars spied on Gladiola as she made her way down the Troll Tree in order to join the rest of the citizens for the party.

"Shall we get a move on soon?" a voice was asking impatiently from the shadows.

"Wait for it." The creature holding the binoculars made a hand gesture indicating for the other to be patient. Finally, after five minutes of waiting, bright fireworks began to pop over the town and into the dark night.

" _Now_ I'll be getting my hands on revenge!"


	4. Crashed Party

Trolls: Gladiola Trollkonge

Chapter 4: Crashed Party

"A Torch of Happiness?"

Gladiola was at the buffet table, drinking flower nectar juice with her close Bergen friend Calico, the daughter of King Gristle and Queen Bridget. The party was very lively right now with the usual disco lights illuminating Bergen Town, everyone dancing from big Bergens to small Trolls at the sound of DJ Suki and Disco Jam's music, glittery fireworks exploding in the air...The typical night party that celebrated the Troll princess' birthday and upcoming coronation. But if there's one person who noticed that her childhood friend was only showing 50% of her usual festive personality, it was Calico.

"How on earth can I even be responsible of such an ancestral gift if I can't even convince myself that I can rule properly?" Gladiola sighed as she stared into her cup.

"That's your problem, Gladiola. You let fear and lack of confidence block you from understanding that if you don't step up and keep your mind open, you'll just keep saying to yourself for your entire life 'I can't do this' or 'I can't do that'," Calico said. Some nearby Trolls blasted confetti in the air, forcing Calico to pull out the confetti that got stuck in her green hair, making Gladiola chuckle at the sight of her friend.

"Since when did you become such a good kingdom management counselor?" Gladiola joked.

"Trust me as your friend and fellow Crown Princess, preparing to rule the Bergens of Bergen Town isn't as easy as it looks." Calico managed to get rid of all the confetti she had on her. "There's interacting with the citizens, working on improving wages, continuing to keep peace with the Trolls, communicating with Bergens who still have trouble adjusting to the fact that they don't need to eat a Troll to be happy..."

"What a relief!" Gladiola sighed.

"And then there's the thing of the Night Soul Tree..."

"Wait, what?"

"The Night Soul Tree," Calico said. "You know, this tree that the Trolls used to grow back in the ancient days when they were still prey to the Bergens and my people 'confiscated' the tree and locked it away somewhere even my dad doesn't know the location because it was meant to poison Bergens..." Calico stopped when she saw her friend's blank face and arched her eyebrows with shock. "I can't believe it! Auntie Poppy, Uncle Branch, and your grandpa didn't tell you anything about it!"

"Poison...Bergens?" The words just stung in Gladiola's chest. It couldn't be. Her people, the happy Trolls that loved to sing, dance, hug, and bring happiness to others, could never be capable of doing a vile thing like _poisoning_.

"There you are, Gladiola!" Branch just arrived, looking for his daughter. "It's time for your Coronation Eve speech, you're expected to speak before everyone!" Gladiola cut herself from her thoughts as she let her father guide her through the crowd of Bergens and Trolls who gathered to a stone platform decorated with string lights and natural flowers: the Friendship Podium, which was used whenever the two species celebrated their friendship at almost every single weekly party. Since the Friendship Podium was built to be half the height of the average adult Bergen, a small staircase was built for any Troll to climb to the platform, which was precisely how Gladiola and Branch got up and joined Queen Poppy and the old Peppy. Everyone applauded until Poppy shushed them.

"My friends," she began, "our days of peace and perfect happiness have endured for eighteen years now! And by tomorrow, they will be getting brighter and happier, for by this time in twenty-four hours, my husband King Branch and I will step down and pass the crown and duty of Troll monarch to our daughter, Princess Gladiola!" The crowd cheered as Gladiola came forth and her mother slightly nudged her to wave at the crowd.

"She's my friend, I know her!" Petite exclaimed from the front row until Gossamer, Fabric, Smitten, Glow Ruby, Disco Jam, Chandler, and Fuzzbert Jr. shushed her. Gladiola almost giggled at the sight of her friend being like Biggie. She cleared her throat and began to speak up.

"I want to thank all of you," she motioned the crowd with her hands, "for showing me how we can all work together to bring happiness to everyone, which is exactly how I want to take care of others when I become Troll Queen. If I'm standing right here before you, promising to grant you a bright effort, it's because of _your_ inner happiness motivating me to bring it out!"

"Such beautiful words..." King Gristle shed a tear.

Gladiola took a breath before continuing her speech. "I must admit, seeing all of you together so happy and all...It still makes me hard to believe that eighteen years ago, we were all under the menace of..."

A cracking sound was heard, interrupting the princess of her speech. The crowd gasped, for they all heard the cracking as well, especially when it got bigger and more menacing. Some of the Bergens gave shelter to the Trolls on their shoulders or pockets.

"Where is it coming from?" Calico hugged her mother.

"I don't know, sweetheart," Bridget said.

"Does this seem like déjà vu to you?" Cooper asked nervously to Poppy.

"I...think I know where the cracking's coming from..." Chandler nodded her head at the Troll Tree. The others looked at what she was talking about, and to the majority of the Trolls' horror, the cracking was actually coming from the Troll Tree. Glowing cracks were growing upwards and threatening to break it in half. Groaning sounds were heard coming out of it...

Two heather colored hands with fingers crowned with sharp purple fingernails broke their way out of the cracks and grabbed each half of the tree, pushing it out of the way as the groaning screaming continued until the thing emerging out of the Troll Tree managed to push the halves roughly halfway across the streets.

"The Troll Tree!" Gladiola cupped her mouth in order to hold back her horror.

"They destroyed our home!" Branch growled furiously.

"Who dares to come destroy the tree at Bergen Town?" King Gristle pushed through the crowd with his guards in order to approach whoever destroyed the Troll Tree. The dust clouds cleared up, revealing two tall Bergens in cooking uniforms. Both had heather skin, mauve and stone blue hair, and the yellow eyes with crimson irises that was found in every Bergen, but as the clouds got clearer, they saw that the tallest of them was a horribly familiar figure...

" **CHEF**?" Gristle, Bridget, Branch, Poppy, Peppy, and all the Trolls and Bergens who knew Chef eighteen or thirty-eight years ago screamed while Gladiola stiffened. It couldn't be...Not again. How could it be...

"I'm _so_ sorry we were late," Chef snickered sadistically as she and her accomplice made their way towards the frightened crowd. All the Trolls tried to hide as best as they could from her. "But we couldn't find one of the ingredients that I needed to make my dish."

"Quit toying with us, Chef!" Gristle snapped his fingers, ordering his guards to surround the two enemies while Branch and Poppy hid Gladiola behind them protectively. "Trollstice is no more and you were banished from Bergen Town for treason twice!"

"Couldn't you just have decapitated her the second time?" Calico said. Chef then glared viciously at Calico, making the Bergen Princess hide behind Bridget.

"Get out of Bergen Town now if you know what's best for you!" Gristle ordered. His guards pointed their spears at the two Bergens.

"Oh, we will, King Gristle," Chef smiled an evil grin, "just as soon as we leave with the princess as my hostage!"

The crowd gasped.

"SEIZE HER!"

The guards started attacking Chef.

"Everyone, evacuate as far as you can!" Gladiola shouted. The citizens complied and soon, every Bergen and Troll were running as far away from the area as fast as they could and locking themselves up in the farthest houses.

"Bridget, take Calico back to the castle!" Gristle told his wife.

"Alright!" She took Calico by the hand and made her run. Meanwhile, Branch grabbed Gladiola and put her on Cooper's back. "Cooper, take Gladiola and the others to the castle and don't let her get out!"

"Dad, no!" Gladiola grabbed her father's arm. "I have to help!"

"You need to survive and rule the Trolls if we don't!" Branch said bitterly. "Cooper, get her out of here before I kick you to convince you!"

"No need to convince me!" Cooper ran as fast as he could away from the area with Gladiola on his back. Meanwhile, the guards were being outmatched by Chef's accomplice, who proved himself to be a worthy combatant who moved and slashed his knives at the guards like a Bergen ninja.

"Who the hell is he?" Branch asked. "I've never seen a Bergen fight like him."

"I don't even know him and I know every single Bergen in this town!" Gristle said.

"It looks like you _don't_ ," Chef snickered.

 _Meanwhile_

"I can't just hide while my parents are fighting, Cooper!" Gladiola kept insisting as Cooper galloped through the streets towards the castle with her on his back. "What about 'No Troll or Bergen left behind'?"

"I know you want to help, but in times like this, you gotta understand that...GLADIOLA!" When Cooper turned his head to look at Gladiola, he stopped and saw that a large ribbon of green and blue hair had wrapped itself around Gladiola, gagging and binding her, and pulled her away from Cooper. The creature, which turned out to be a female Troll, ran on the roofs back where the fighting place was taking place with Gladiola still dangling on her hair. Cooper tried to run back to save the princess, but it was too late. The creature had arrived where the others were.

"I GOT THE PRINCESS!" she shouted. King Gristle and the other Trolls gasped when they saw that the princess Chef was actually after was...

"GLADIOLA!" Poppy and Branch screamed. The enemy Troll used part of her hair to swing herself on one of the lampposts while the other half threw a screaming Gladiola into the leather satchel of Chef's Bergen accomplice. "Help!" Gladiola screamed before he zipped the satchel shut, trapping her in it. The Bergen accomplice then caught the other female Troll in the palm of his hand and gently placing her on his shoulder.

"Our work is done! Let's go!" Chef barked at them. They ran towards the spot where the Troll Tree once stood and jumped in it. The others ran after them and saw that a large hole stood where the Troll Tree once did.

"They must have enlarged the underground tunnel that the Trolls used to escape Bergen Town in the past!" Peppy realized.

"Gladiola..." Poppy broke on her knees. Branch held her shoulders.

"We'll find her, Poppy," he told her.

"I'll get every guard I have to patrol the outside of Bergen Town to see if they kind Chef and her lackeys," Gristle said.

"Agreed. We'll also get the Trolls to search through this tunnel and see if we can find any clue." Branch nodded. "Gladiola's in danger. We have to find her!"

"Who knows what Chef will do her?" Poppy whimpered. "What if she...what if she eats my daughter?"

"It won't happen!" Branch said firmly. "Gladiola is our daughter and the future Troll Queen! Until we find her, I'm sure she'll be able to make it!"


	5. Escaped, Lost and Found

Trolls: Gladiola Trollkonge

Chapter 5: Escaped, Lost and Found

Gladiola lost track of how many hours she spent trying to force the zipper of the satchel she was trapped in. Panic overwhelmed her. The Bergen Chef was still alive and now had her captured right on the eve of Gladiola's coronation. What was Gladiola supposed to do? Despite her father teaching her to be cautious at all times, she never thought that she'd have to deal with a problem like getting stolen by a Bergen criminal who wanted revenge on one entire town!

The satchel moved numerous times, making her bump in it. Finally, she heard Chef's menacing voice. "Give me that satchel!" Soon enough, the zipper finally opened and Gladiola was tossed into a metal birdcage. Chef instantly locked the small prison's door with a key that she eventually swallowed, much to Gladiola's disturbance, and placed the table on a wooden desk in the middle of a fancy office room. Due to the dark curtains covering the windows, Gladiola couldn't tell if it was night or day.

"So you did find the Troll princess, as I told you." A male man of Chef's height took a look at Gladiola. He seemed to be close to Chef's age and wore a chef uniform like Chef's and her accomplice's, only he had a dark grey English mustache, spoke in an accent that reminded Gladiola of Biggie's and Petite's...and was unusually better looking than Chef concerning physiques.

"Yes, but you never told me that it was the offspring of that annoying Poppy and arrogant Branch!" Chef snapped. "I expected it to be Poppy!"

"My dear, you surely didn't think that after eighteen years since your last conflict, Princess Poppy wouldn't have moved her title to Queen, marry, and produce an heir?"

"So, it's true then?" Something jumped out of the man's uniform's front pocket: a purple male Troll with green and blue hair losing their colors due to old age and yellow trousers that had several stitches on them. Gladiola instantly recognized him from the history books. "Poppy married that good-for-nothing Branch."

Out of instinct, Gladiola lashed his hair at him and tried to choke him until Chef flicked her fingers at Gladiola's stomach, sending her flying across the cage and releasing Creek from her grasp. "Definetly their daughter..." He choked as he tended to his neck.

"You two are supposed to be dead!" Gladiola told Chef and Creek as she got up.

"Oh, you're right! We _should_ have been dead after your parents and the Bergen royalty sent us flying out of Bergen Town on a burning stew pot, making us land on a hill that turned out to be a monster," Chef said.

"But as we were about to accept our inevitable deaths, we ended up discovering that the hill monster was just one of those rare hidden portals leading to other worlds," Creek continued. "We ended up in this one and met this warlock, Mr. Darwin, who was very generous to give us shelter and assistance..."

"To get my revenge!" Chef cackled. "Bring an end to Gristle and his family's reign and bring back Trollstice!"

"Wow," Gladiola said with a dry smug, "it still took you another eighteen years to come up with revenge? I'm surprised you haven't resorted to a retired life of knitting in a senior home."

Chef's accomplice and the female Troll who aided in Gladiola's kidnapping giggled at the insult until Chef glared at them, making them shut up. "You two! Guard that Troll and make sure that she doesn't leave!" She shoved the cage into the Bergen boy's arms, nearly making the female Troll fall from his shoulder. "And for crying out loud, Dårlig, stop treating that Troll like she's your pet!"

"Chef, don't you dare!" Creek said in a threatening tone despite Chef's height advantage.

"Or what?" She snapped. "Will you make a scrapbook out of hugs and convince me that the world is all cupcake and rainbows?" The two proceeded to get into a bickering, making Mr. Darwin groan and do a hand gesture telling the Bergen boy Dårlig that they were excused. The youngsters then proceeded out of the office and into a beige-painted hallway with hung framed paper rewards of Mr. Darwin being the best local restaurant manager. Seeing the decorations made Gladiola cringe in her cage. Was that part of Chef's plan? Starting her plan for revenge by serving Gladiola into one of the main dishes of the restaurant?

An escape was mandatory. Luckily for her, she knew a thing or two about escaping, thanks to her paranoid father's tutelage, and took the advantage of her 'wardens' being distracted in conversation to notice Gladiola pull out her least favorite pair of scrapbooking scissors.

"If I had a nickel for her constant bickering and telling me to eat you, I'd have enough money to get myself a truck to run over with!" Dårlig said in a gruff tone as he stopped at a dead end. The female Troll sitting on his shoulder used her hair to grab a handle screwed to the ceiling and brought it down, opening a trapdoor that also brought down a ladder that Dårlig used to climb them inside a dark room. Once he got his feet on the platform, he turned on a switch, giving light into the dark space that turned out to be an attic room with a dirty grey folding screen, a mattress with barely any sheets on it, boxes covered in spider webs, a pile of dishes and soap bottles hanging by a pipe sticking out of the ceiling, a white curtain covering the only window in the room, a few potted plants, a nightstand, and a neat makeshift doll house by the mattress.

"Try to behave," Dårlig sternly told Gladiola as he put the cage on the nightstand. "Last thing I want is Chef barging into my room and breaking my limbs if she finds out you escaped."

"This is not a bedroom, this is an attic." Gladiola hid her scissors behind her back to make sure that they didn't notice her escape tool.

"You think Chef's workers live a hotel life?" Dårlig rolled his eyes before heading to the pipe and shaking it, causing water to come out of it. "Royal brat." He filled a small plastic cup the size of half his thumb with water and handed it to the Troll female on his shoulders. "Here you go, Feige. You look like you could use a drink."

"Thanks, Dårlig." Quickly, while Dårlig was busy walking away from the cage and 'Feige' was drinking on his shoulder, Gladiola took her scissors and proceeded to pick the lock on her cage's door. By the time her male warden began to make himself busy by brushing is Troll companion like a doll, Gladiola heard the silent sound of her successful attempt at picking the lock. Unfortunately, the cage's door didn't spare a pitched creaking sound when Gladiola pushed it open. Dårlig and Feige noticed that sound easily.

"GET BACK IN YOUR CAGE!" Dårlig ran towards the table, but Gladiola was quick enough to punch the switch and shut down the lights, making Dårlig tumble in the dark and distract Feige while Gladiola ran up the white curtains and pried the window's lock open. She landed on a wet gutter that made her slip and slide down a pipe until she landed on solid ground and gasped in shock when she realized that she wasn't in Bergen Town at all. She seemed in some sort of town with buildings taller and much straighter than twenty Bergen houses and, a large mass of water bordering an area full of strange houses with Bergen sized people like Mr. Darwin, only they all had different skin colors, stiff clothes, shoes, five fingers, and all were moving around in a mix of emotions that Gladiola had never seen before.

Where on Earth did she land?

"Find the Troll Princess at once!" Gladiola heard Chef's voice barking as if she were ordering someone. She knew she was in a strange world, but she couldn't stay and let Chef catch her, so she ran as far as she could across a small wood bridge, dodging as best as she could the creatures walking in different directions, and barely missing the plain birds flying down and trying to bite her. One of them managed to peck her on the knee, making her non-stop running hurt even more and her eyes swell up with tears as her mind begged Heavens to bring her back home to her family and friends where she really belonged. It was only a matter of time until her foot tripped onto a bump on the ground and she tripped into the sticky water body of the area, knocking her unconscious due to her inability to swim.

"Search everywhere!" Chef barked at Mr. Darwin's employees, making them spread around in order to find the runaway Troll. "Even though here role is crucial, I still need Princess Gladiola for my revenge!"

 _Later on_

Something hit Gladiola on the lips. Was it what it felt like to be dead? Having water drip on your face?

As the dripping continued, Gladiola's tongue licked the water that touched her lips and realized that it wasn't water but milk and that the skin her tongue touched was still warm. Could it mean that...

"Wake up," a small, unknown female voice said.

Gladiola struggled to open her eyes as if she went back eighteen years ago to when she hatched from the stripped gladiola and opened her eyes, waiting for her blurry vision to clear up and show her beloved parents. The blurriness cleared up and showed her a female of this strange world's creatures: almost an inch or two smaller than Chef, smooth peach skin, dark brown hair that reached the shoulders, black clothing, and brown eyes looking down at Gladiola as the latter woke up. "Hi there."

Gladiola struggled to sit up on the large pillow she had been laying on for god knows how long she had been unconscious. A small pain hit her and she looked at her lower body, felt her cold bare feet, and saw that the female creature put a Band-Aid around her knee.

"W...Where am I?" she asked. She looked around her. They were in a small room much smaller than Mr. Darwin's office and no different in size than the ugly place Bridget used to live in as a scullery made. All the brick and wooden walls were painted in white and the fourth wall was made of homosote and decorated with calendars, a pinned board, many pinned papers, and star stickers. Some parts of the other walls did have a few posters and pictures for decorations. The rest of the room involved a closet covered by a green curtain, a colorful carpet, a rack holding drying clothes, a see-through blue curtain covering the sole window, a nightstand, many objects stacked in piles on the corners, and a loft bed with blue covers. The same bed where the creature was sitting on and the pillow on which Gladiola was resting on.

"It's my bedroom in my dorm," the female said nicely. She dipped a bottle cap into a glass full of milk that was sitting on the nightstand and gave it to Gladiola once it was full. "Here, you must be thirsty..." Gladiola snatched the cap and drank as much milk as she good. Clearly she was eager to have a proper beverage after nearly drowning in the icky water.

"How on earth did a small thing like you manage to fall in the Harbor?" The female looked at Gladiola as the Troll put the empty cap on the pillow and tried to stand up, nearly tripping down on the pillowcase folds until the female creature caught her in the palm of her hand. "Easy there! Your knee lost some blood when I found you in the water! It's a miracle that you didn't bleed to death by the time I made it back and put a Band-Aid over your injury?"

"Why didn't you just take me to a doctor?" Gladiola frowned. "And what kind of Bergen are you?"

"You mean...you've never met a human before?" The female asked Gladiola until the latter freaked out and jumped at the nightstand. "What's wrong?"

"WHY ARE MY PARENTS, GUY DIAMOND, DJ, AND HARPER FROZEN?" Gladiola pointed at five figurines on the nightstand, referring to the fact that these figurines looked a lot like the Trolls she mentioned. Suddenly, a sneeze came out of Gladiola.

"You seriously need to take a bath. The water at the Inner Harbor ain't exactly clean." The human got up. "Hang on, I got just the thing." She left room, leaving Gladiola to wait and look at the frozen Trolls until the human came back with a bowl full of warm water and foam and a paper towel. She made some space on the nightstand in order to put the bowl in a good position. "There. Time to take a bath!"

Gladiola cautiously took a small step towards the bowl that was barely taller than the tip of her hair. Her nose sniffed at the water and relaxed its senses when it caught the scent of lemon.

"You don't mind if I change?"

 _Minutes later_

"So, let me get this straight: your parents are actually Poppy and Branch, who turn out to be married, and you were supposed to become Queen of the Trolls before your birthday until Chef and Creek had the party crashed and you kidnaped to Baltimore?" The human girl asked Gladiola while the former was sitting on her bed and tapping on some grey device and Gladiola was busy scrubbing every inch of her hair and scrubbing her skin with paper towel pieces in order to get much cleaner. Feeling the icky stuff from before off her was a relief. "That sucks."

"What's Baltimore?" Gladiola twisted her hair to get the water out and eventually shook it madly until it almost looked as wild as the hair of her grandfather.

"Oh, right. There are no towns other than Bergen Town in your world," the human girl realized. "See, humans live in many different parts of the world and build different cities in large landscapes that they call 'countries'. Right now, you're in a country called 'America' in a city called 'Baltimore'."

"So you live here?" Gladiola got out of the bowl and began to dry herself up.

"Nah, my home's in a town called Washington DC and an hour away from here..." The human girl stopped herself and saw that Gladiola was looking at her dirty dress and sandals. "Hang on. I'll see if I can find something for you to wear while I have your clothes cleaned!" She got off her bed and went from going through her closet and pulling out a blue cloth to grabbing a pair of scissors, green thread, and a needle from her desk before going back to the bed and starting to sew.

"But, if this...Baltimore isn't your home, how come you're here?" Gladiola looked around the objects on the nightstand in awe.

"Humans go to places called colleges and universities when they're eighteen-years-old and study for four years in order to prepare being an adult with a career that will make them earn money to support families and all. But they are so many all over the world and depending on what or how they want to study, humans go live at these schools away from home. In my case, I'm going and living in a boarding an hour away from home to learn how to pursue a career in art." She finished sewing and gave Gladiola a conveniently fitting blue robe.

"Ooh, I love art!" Gladiola's hair and eyes perked in excitement at the mention of art as she put on the robe and used one of the ribbons she kept with her to wrap it around her waist. "Do they teach you scrapbooking? Singing? Dancing? Painting? Ribbon dancing? Pet grooming?"

"It's more of animation, architecture, ceramics, illustration, graphic design, sculpture, painting, fiber, interactive art...It depends on the kind of art you want to do for a living."

"What kind of art do you really like?" Gladiola grabbed a small brush and began to brush-up her hair.

"Character designing and using the creations to make up stories." The human girl picked up one of the 'frozen Trolls', the one that looked like Poppy, and showed it to Gladiola. "That's why I like collecting toy figurines of my favorite characters like your parents. They're colorful, they have strong personalities that were essential in their story's plot, and I just _love_ the music!"

"Aw, that's...Wait, I still don't know how you saved me."

"Oh, that. I was at the Inner Harbor for some shopping at the bookstore Barnes And Noble, and when I was on my way back, I was walking by the docks and saw something blue floating on the surface. At first I thought it was a fish, but since humans aren't known for clean rivers, it was unlikely for me to find such a bright color, so I went to have a closer look and I saw that it looked like a Troll. I got to admit, I first thought you were a figurine of Satin or Chenille and you'd be good as a free addition to my collection, but I saw your bleeding knee after I fished you out and realized that there's no such thing as a bleeding toy. I put you in my purse and caught a light rail ferry to take me back to campus." She put the Poppy figurine back on the nightstand. "It's still...shocking to see an actual living Troll like you. In this world, you're seen as a bunch of collectible toys and all. I never knew you guys were the real deal!"

"And I never knew that humans were such a thing!" Gladiola went through the few belongings she had. "That's odd...I guess I lost my hairbrush..."

"Wait, I still have those that came with the Troll figurines!" The human girl went towards the window and came back to show Gladiola a small comb. Perfectly sized for her, Gladiola accepted the comb and proceeded to brush her hair thoroughly, which helped her think things through. "As soon as my knee gets better, I'm going back to find Chef."

"Hold the phone, are you nuts?" The human girl grabbed Gladiola in her hands, letting the Troll sit in her palms and look up at her.

"Maybe from the energy, but I have to go back to my family and everyone else in Bergen Town!" Gladiola protested in determination. "If Chef is still out there and she's cooking some sort of revenge with Creek, those other two goons, and that human warlock, I'll be needed back home to protect the Trolls! It's my responsibility as the next queen!"

"And I get that, Gladiola," the human girl used Gladiola's name for the first time, "but try to think things through. For starters, do you even know the _exact_ location of Chef's hideout other than the fact that it's near the Inner Harbor?"

"Well, when I was kidnapped, I saw some decorations in the hallways rewarding the human warlock for being a great local restaurant manager, and since Chef is...well, a chef, it would make sense if she hid herself in a restaurant," Gladiola.

"Wow, you think things more thoroughly like your dad," the human girl said in amazement before moving on. "So you know they could be in a restaurant, but Inner Harbor is packed with a bunch of restaurants and shops, they could be anywhere! And human cities aren't exactly like Bergen Town: more traffic and people moving around, complex neighborhoods, areas that can be dangerous from smuggling and murder, animals that could eat you in your case...You can get hurt before Chef hurts you!"

"So, what do I do?" Gladiola looked like she was going to cry until she felt a large finger wiping away the tear from her cheek.

"Please don't cry, Gladiola," the human girl said with a small smile. "Look, I promise we'll find where Chef is, but only after your knee gets hurt. You need to get your strength in order to face that Bergen Witch!"

Gladiola laughed at the part of Chef being called a witch. A yawn suddenly escaped from her lips. "What time is it?"

"Last time I checked, it's 10:15pm," the human girl said. "It'll be time for me to go to bed. I have class in the morning." She put Gladiola back on the nightstand and stood there, thinking, until she came up with an idea. She opened the first drawer of her nightstand, revealing it to be full of socks, underclothes, and a jewelry box. She pushed them aside to make some space and took some colorful scarfs and a beanie hat. She placed them in the available space like a makeshift bed. "It's the best I can do," she said genuinely. "I'm not used to, you know, finger-sized guests."

"No, it will do...Thanks..." Gladiola yawned, accidently tripping and nearly falling off the nightstand. Fortunately, the human girl caught her and tucked her in the makeshift bed. "I can't believe...I'm so tired."

"Then take some rest, Gladiola." The human girl made sure that Gladiola was comfortable in her makeshift bed before going on to switch the lights off. "Good night."

"Good...night..." Gladiola yawned one last time before falling asleep.


	6. Gladiola and the Humans

Trolls: Gladiola Trollkonge

Chapter 6: Gladiola and the Humans

Trolls always woke up early once they felt the warmth of the rays of dawn piercing through their pods, so Gladiola was used to it.

Dawn came, making Gladiola blink her eyes instinctively until they finally opened. At first, she hoped that this was all a dream and that she just fainted from anxiety during the party at Bergen Town. But no, she did find herself waking up in the makeshift bed in the drawer full of socks and undergarments and the jewelry box.

She got up and peaked at the bed next to the nightstand. The human girl was sleeping soundly, with all her covers twisted in a sense that indicated that she must have had a trouble with sleeping. Not wanting to wake her host, Gladiola tried to move around as quietly as she could. As she tried to walk out of the dresser, she accidently knocked over the jewelry box, causing the lid to open and the jewelry it contained to fall out. The Troll Princess rushed to pick the stuff up. Most of the jewelry were plastic necklaces and bracelets and the few occasional pendants. To think that Gladiola thought the Bergens' use of plastic was cheap back home.

She managed to put all the jewelry back in the box, but right before she could close the lid, one of the necklaces caught her attention: a chain necklace with a rose pendant that had a small lid, which Gladiola recognized as a locket. Back home, it was common for Trolls and Bergens alike to give their loved ones lockets as a token of their love. Gladiola herself gave Poppy a hand-made locket that popped glitter for Mother's Day.

She popped the rose locket open. On the right side of the flower's interior was a picture of three people who looked happily at Gladiola while they were at the beach. She recognized the youngest one in the cute blue bathing suit as the human girl, but the other two, a dark-haired man who seemed to share the top half of the girl's face and a dark-haired woman hugging the girl warmly in her arms, seemed unfamiliar to her. Judging by how they warmly interacted in the picture and the fact that the pendant's left side said in cursive 'Never forget that we love you no matter what', Gladiola guessed that the adults must be the girl's parents.

 **Beep! Beep! Bee-Beep!**

A strange flat box on the desk began to vibrate and began to make an annoying beeping sound that scared Gladiola. Quickly, she hid the locket back in the jewelry box and used her hair to swing herself from the drawer towards the desk.

 **Beep! Beep! Bee-Beep!**

"Shut up!" Gladiola hissed. A moaning came from the bed. The human girl woke up, rubbed her head, and turned it to see Gladiola trying to shake the box in order to shut it.

 **Beep! Beep! Bee-Beep!**

"Gladiola? What are you doing with my phone?" The girl frowned.

"Your...phone?" Gladiola frowned. She had seen telephones back in Bergen Town, but they were connected to a box with a string and Bergens generally used it to communicate with somebody else a block away. Trolls hardly used phones because they interacted with anybody.

"Yes, it's a cell phone." The girl took the phone from Gladiola and tapped on it, making the beeping noise suddenly sound before she put it back down on the desk. She walked towards the curtain that covered her closet and pushed it aside so that she could pull out what looked like a black sweatshirt and grey gym pants before going to the drawers underneath the one Gladiola slept in and pulling out a red long-sleeved shirt and a bra, underwear, and socks from the top drawer. "I need to take my shower. Can I trust you to not accidentally wake my apartment-mates?"

"I'll be discreet." Gladiola promised. "By the way, you never said your name."

"My name, right." The girl unexpectedly looked sour. "It's Licene." Gladiola couldn't keep herself but to laugh and nearly roll off the desk until Licene quickly caught her with the pile of clothes in her hands. "Gladiola, stop laughing!"

"Not my fault if you're name starts with 'lice'!" Gladiola giggled while Licene led the two of them out of Licene's bedroom through a small hallway. Before entering the small bathroom that could only fit a human or two in there, Licene quickly put Gladiola on the small living room's dull brown couch. "Look, please stay here and do not move until I come out of the shower to make breakfast."

Gladiola nodded. While Licene went to take her shower in the bathroom, Gladiola jumped at the windowsill to get a better view of the neighborhood she was now stuck in. The building they seemed to be located in was next to two parallel four-story tall buildings made of white painted bricks and blue rails and doors. Each building was separated from one another by a small rectangular field made of nothing but flat, green grass and two sidewalks for students to walk on in order to reach a street to led to a mix of brick buildings and one giant building that looked like a twisted hourglass. Neon colored letters were flashing on the hourglass building like magic.

 **Welcome to the Art University for Rare Artists! Learn at AURA, where you make your artistic aura supreme!**

"And I thought Bergen Town was lame for obviously naming itself the town of Bergens," Gladiola rolled her eyes in sarcasm. She turned to the wall where the couch was leaning on and was amazed on how it was entirely painted to look like a rainbow valley made out of wave like curves tainted with colors that varied in the blue, violet, and pink areas. Seeing the mix of intense of saturation hypnotized her small eyes.

"You like it?" Licene came out of the bathroom wearing the clothes she had picked out. She opened the fridge to take out a carton of milk. "My apartment-mates and I painted it together on the first weekend we spent at AURA. That's my college, by the way. The Art University for Rare Artists in Baltimore." She briefly looked at Gladiola before opening a cabinet full of plates, bowls, and glasses. "Uh, are you hungry?"

A growl rumbled through the barricade of skin that Gladiola had over her stomach. She hugged her stomach uncomfortably as she asked: "I...don't suppose you have any berries?" Trolls could eat anything, but their metabolism required that they ate berries at least once a week. Otherwise, they wouldn't get all that sugary energy they had for singing and dancing.

Licene opened the freezer on top of the fridge and pulled out two bags labeled **FROZEN STRAWBERRIES** and **FROZEN BLUEBERRIES**. Gladiola watched as the human put some of the berries in a bowl and placed it in a weird black box that made weird buzzing noises and lights once Licene placed the bowl in it. "What are you doing with the berries?"

"I'm using the microwave to heat them up." A _ding_ came and Licene took out the bowl. The sweet scent of warm berry juice upset Gladiola's stomach even more. She used her hair to swing herself onto Licene's shoulder while the latter mixed in some plain yogurt with the berries, turning the white into a pinkish purple color. Licene then filled a glass with milk, grabbed a spoon and a bottle cap, and sat down at the small brown table the living room had. "Voilà!" She put the bowl and glass down and gave the bottle cap to Gladiola. "Homemade berry yogurt and fat free skim milk for breakfast. Dig in!"

The two proceeded to eat. While Licene ate the yogurt with her spoon, Gladiola carefully tried to scoop the yogurt out of the bowl with her bottle cap without accidentally falling in it. Licene noticed Gladiola's nervous behavior as the Troll silently ate her yummy yogurt and heated berries. "Gladiola, are you...afraid that I'm gonna eat you?"

"No!" Gladiola said abruptly before lowering her tone sheepishly. "Maybe..."  
"Gladiola, I'm not like the Bergens. I don't eat Trolls." She moved her index towards Gladiola in order to wipe off the yogurt that was sticking on the latter's cheek, making Gladiola look at Licene with surprise. The Troll Princess' lips began to feel dry.

"Could I...drink some milk, please?"

Licene nodded and brought the glass of milk over in a position where she hoped Gladiola wouldn't have any difficulty drinking from it, but the latter was too high compared to the glass and accidentally fell in the milk. "GLADIOLA!" Licene jumped off her chair and ran to pour the milk into the sink and catch Gladiola with her spare hand. Soaked with milk, Gladiola coughed.

"Clearly things were better back home," she muttered. Before Licene could say anything, music came from the only room with a closed door. Gladiola perked her head when she recognized the tune. "Hey, that's a Bob Marley song!"

"Hide now, sing later!" Licene stuffed Gladiola into the hood of her sweatshirt. While the Troll made sure she was well-hidden, but comfortable in her temporary hiding spot, Licene quickly stuffed her mouth with the remains of her breakfast and brought the dirty dishes to the sink right when a blue-haired girl came walking in, looking like she spent an even more restless night than Licene did, with her PJs and her own bin of toiletry. "Morning, Patricia," Licene said casually as if she wasn't hiding anything in her sweatshirt's hood.

"Morning," the girl moaned before going inside the bathroom and closing the door. Licene sighed in relief once she heard the shower running.

"You are _so_ not staying alone in my room while I'm gone!" She told Gladiola sternly.

"Do tell. Have you _seen_ her PJs? Someone should tell her that silver and lemon yellow are a terrible combo!"

 _Ten minutes later_

After brushing their teeth and making sure that Gladiola's dress was dry and the Troll was well hidden in Licene's sweatshirt, the two of them made way to the first class Licene had in the morning on Mondays. Since Licene was one of those rare youngsters to arrive in class thirty minutes in advance, nobody else was in the classroom to witness a lavender-skinned Troll flipping through the big pages of Licene's textbook while the human girl did some research on her computer.

"This is ridiculous," Gladiola said as she shut the book. "What kind of class names itself 'WHY SHOULD YOU BE INTERESTED IN ART'? It's like me asking you why the sky's blue and the sun sets on the West!"

"Trust me, as much as I don't like the history part of art, I need to take WHY SHOULD YOU BE INTERESTED IN ART." Licene stopped tapping on her laptop and showed an image on the screen. "Does he ring a bell to you?"

Gladiola gasped." It's him! He's that Mr. Darwin! The human who's guarding Chef and Creek and their accomplices!"

"I did some research. Turns out that your Mr. Darwin pal is in fact a restaurant owner at the Inner Harbor, just six buildings away from Barnes & Noble. Apparently, his restaurant specializes in multicultural dishes and..." Licene shivered in disgust.

"And what?" Gladiola asked.

"And... its own deli market."

Gladiola shivered in disgust as well. Since Bergens weren't exactly known for their cooking talents (if you exclude Chef during Trollstice), they mostly ate from deli markets in Bergen Town, where the prepared food was capable to give a Troll diarrhea. Even Gladiola's father got diarrhea from deli food before the Trolls finally settled back in the Troll Tree and helped the Bergens find better ways to eat.

"So all we need to do is see that we can sneak in the restaurant!" Gladiola pulled out her scrapbooking kit and began to scrapbook her plan. "I hide in your purse while you go to the restaurant. There, you pretend to be a normal customer while I sneak around to find clues on whatever was the way Chef managed to come from and to this world and see if I can use it to come back home, where I reunite with everyone, and I get back to my coronation, and we're all happy!" Her scrapbook's final page popped up to look like Licene holding Gladiola and her Troll family and friends in her hands while they all shouted 'WE DID IT!' and spit glitter that landed in the back of Licene's hand.

"Good plan, but there's just one problem," Licene said. "I hate deli food."

"Your taste buds aren't the priority here," Gladiola said coldly. She covered her mouth when she realized the tone she had just used. It sounded so...unusually like her. Even Licene was blinking at her in confusion. "W...Why do I sound different?"

"You sounded like you were being self-centered..." Licene put a finger on Gladiola's forehead to see if swimming in the Inner Harbor hadn't perhaps given her a fever. Her finger froze when she felt a very small, but very easy to feel area of Gladiola's skin that felt much less like skin but more like something solid.

"Uh oh..." Licene pulled her finger out of the way.

"I'm not turning grey, right? Trolls turn grey when they lose hope and I'm sure I have at least 99.99% of hope in me!" Gladiola said in paranoid glee.

"No. Gladiola, I felt a small portion of your skin feel like plastic." The human's eyes widened in horror when she realized something. "Gladiola, what happens to a Troll once he or she leaves your home world?"

"I don't know." The princess shrugged. "Creek and that other female Troll looked fine and they've been here for, what, almost eighteen years?"

"Forget them, your skin almost started to feel like it was turning as plastic as the Troll figurines in my room! Who knows how much time you have, but if we don't find a way back to your home, you'll probably end up living the rest of your life as a plastic toy!"

Gladiola's mouth opened in horror. Was that what would happen to her if she didn't go back to Bergen Town? Remain permanently in the human world as a plastic toy that would just end up sitting on somebody's shelf like any collectible figure and spend god knows how many years a human toy can live? Gladiola began to imagine Chef dragging all the Trolls from Bergen Town and waiting until they were all frozen so that she could force-feed the Bergens with them, heck, even poison a frozen Troll to feed it to Gladiola's friends in the Bergen royalty family. If this was Chef's plan, it was awfully monstrous. Just thinking about it made Gladiola faint and fall onto the carpeted floor of the classroom right when a group of human students came in.

"Gladiola!" Licene got of her chair and picked up the small Troll. Curious, the other human students came to get a look at the small creature.

"What is it?" A redheaded boy asked.

"It's a she! Does anyone have any water to wake her up?" Licene asked.

"Hang on, I might have something that will work." Another boy grabbed the coffee cup that a girl was holding and cautiously poured the hot substance in Gladiola's open mouth, making the Troll instantly sit upstraight.

"I'm fine thank you very much Licene! What the Hell was wrong with you for putting hot water on me? I should..." Her hyperactive energy wore down when she saw the other humans staring at her. "Oh."

"I can't believe it!" The girl who got her coffee cup stolen to wake up the former gasped. She began to poke Gladiola with her finger. "It's alive!"

"Hey!" Gladiola used her hair to slap on the girl's hand. "Just because I'm small doesn't mean I don't value personal space!"

"She didn't mean it," the human boy who had poured coffee on Gladiola said in an apologizing tone. Gladiola felt the tips of her ears burning when she saw the boy: tall in human height, skin slightly more tanned than Licene's, black shoulder length hair with pointy ends and a brown-dyed streak, a red T-Shirt with a graffiti design of pastries exploding the words SUGAR'S GOT IT, black cargo pants and shoes, and a brown backpack. His brown eyes looked back at her blue ones in fascination. "Huh. You're actually pretty cute."

Gladiola blushed.

"OK, I need you guys to _not_ tell anyone else about her," Licene said crossly while she put Gladiola down on her desk, which didn't stop the others of getting a closer look at the Troll Princess.

"Lips sealed."

"You can trust us."

"Of course."

"No prob."

"OK." Licene took a deep breath and made the introductions as slow and steady as she could. "Guys, this is Gladiola Trollkonge. She's a Troll from another world who needs to go back home as soon as possible. Gladiola, these are some of my classmates. The redhead here is Arthur..."

"Call me Art!" Arthur gave a small handshake to Gladiola with his big hand. "Since we're in an art school."

"The sugar boy over there is Willy."

"Nice to meet you." He gave a nod to Gladiola.

"The original owner of the coffee cup is Matilda, or Mattie for short." Licene presented Mattie, a dark-skinned girl with braided blue hair and several piercings on her eyebrows.

"I dig the blue in you," Mattie sai in a gothic tone. "It brings out my inner chakra."

"Uh, thanks?" Gladiola almost took a step back when she received the 'compliment' from the blue-loving gothic teen.

"And finally, there's Alice." The last human was a girl with grey eyes but not a single inch of hair.

"How come you don't have any hair?" Gladiola asked.

"Because I'm _so_ against the numerous stereotypical judging that people make when it comes to hair. Besides, I save money by avoiding to pay for shampoo and the hair salon." She gave a warning finger to Gladiola. "And don't even start _thinking_ to voluntarily cut your hair to make me a wig!"

"Trolls can't even cut their hair." Gladiola rolled her eyes. She looked at the four humans she had just been introduced to. "So, you guys are _all_ artists?"

"Yep!" Art grinned. "I'm a sculptor."

"Painter." Willy said.

"Metal jewelry. So rad," Mattie said while making a peace sign with her two hands. Gladiola frowned at the gesture.

"I'm into rope-making," Alice said.

"Alice, we talked this over," Art said. "Making ropes _isn't_ art."

"Making rope is art, Art!" Alice grabbed Art by the collar of his jacket and shook him. "We live in an unsuspecting world! Who knows when we'll need a rope to lasso all the zombies that will come after our graves or to trap a group of terrorists in a net?"

"Alice is a high-believer of the apocalypse," Licene explained to Gladiola as silently as she could so that Alice wouldn't hear.

"Why did I not see that?" Gladiola rolled her eyes.

"So, Gladiola," Willy asked, "how come your in our world? Do your parents know that you're in a human art college?"

"Well, actually..." She and Licene began to tell the whole story to them. They listened attentively to their story, nodding at the parts they understood and shivering in disgust and fear at the part concerning Chef.

"Is she that weird lady with purple skin and blue hair that makes my grandma look hotter than her?" Mattie asked.

"Yes. Do you know her?" Gladiola tried very hard to not laugh at the part of Mattie suggesting that her grandmother was better looking than Chef. Than again, it was probably true since humans looked a whole lot better physically than Bergens.

"Darwin's World Food and Deli Market is a place that I like to crash at on my days off and week-ends. Baltimore doesn't have any depressing places to hang out in like back in my hole in Hobotown, but that restaurant is depressing enough for me to hang out at. Criminal food that brings you joy to the stomach, mystery meat in the deli market..." She stopped her ranting when she saw the four other humans and the Troll princess looking speechlessly at her. "Anyway, I've seen this lady Chef cooking at the place ever since I started college. Claims that she's been working there for eighteen years."

"That's the amount of time Chef and Creek spent outside of Bergen Town ever since they got kicked out of Bergen Town," Gladiola said with a frown. "How long was Mr. Darwin's restaurant open?"

"According to his website? Since the eighties." Licene checked her computer. "Food critics and the health inspector have demanded that the place be shut down for its disgrace to the culinary arts industry for years, but for some reason it's still open."

"Probably because he's a warlock." Gladiola grimaced. "I think he saw something useful in Chef and Creek to give them shelter and help for Chef's revenge plan."  
"I bet he gave your foes a cure to prevent them from turning into plastic like you." Willy gently rubbed the microscopic plastic area on Gladiola's forehead with his thumb.

"Yeah, but what about the other two?" Gladiola let herself get picked up in his warm hand. "I don't even know them and nor does everyone else in Bergen Town and the Troll Tree. And that's impossible because _everyone_ knows each other when I'm from!"

"That would be ten times my amount of friends on Facebook," Alice muttered with jealousy.

"I don't know about this Creek guy," Mattie said, "but I do know which of the other two cronies you're talking about. The one named Dårlig..."

"What kind of loser has a mom naming him Darling?" Art asked.

"It's _Dårlig_ , Art," Willy corrected him. "It's Norwegian for 'bad'."

"As _bad_ as his name is, the guy's a total hunk compared to Chef," Mattie said. "I mean, come on, this Chef lady has a chin bigger than her own head, crooked teeth, and pimples all over her skin like some Halloween witch."

"Uh, all Bergens have that kind of physique..." Gladiola cautiously pointed out.

"But then try comparing her with Dårlig if you want to risk losing your brains! He's got no wrinkles, no pimples, he has the exact same colors as Chef, but at least his teeth are straight and his nail properly sharpened! One time, back when the first semester started and I started going out to the restaurant more often, it was a hot day when I had to go pee in the restroom and I spotted the guy cleaning the dishes _bare chested_! You could feel the insane heat coming from the kitchen and I heard that Chef was cruel to him enough to not provide him with any clothes to replace the ragged uniform he had on that day..."

They heard steps coming from the hallway. Licene quickly grabbed Gladiola and hid her in her hood. "Let's talk about it again at lunch break. I don't think we want the teacher to find out we have an unexpected guest in our class."

"We'll just quickly get our food to go from the food court and crash at the roofdeck of the Hourglass," Willy said.

 _An hour and a half later, on the roofdeck of the Hourglass_

The Hourglass building was much taller than Gladiola had imagined it when she had first seen it from Licene's window. Fifty feet made entirely of glass, the Hourglass Building was also made out of glass from the inside, which meant that people could see the students studying through the glass walls, the security guard at the glass desk could see a couple making out above the glass floor near the girls' glass bathroom, and all the staircases, doors, and rolling chairs were made out of glass. This just made humans look weirder to Gladiola's eyes as her new human friends took the glass elevator to the roofdeck, the sole place in the entire Hourglass building that wasn't made of glass but of strong cement holding a well-made walking pavement. Gladiola jumped off Licene's shoulder and got close to the edge to watch in awe the view of Baltimore from where she was standing. From up here, it almost made her feel like she was supreme.

While Licene and Art started setting up the plastic containers of food on the ground, Willy kept Gladiola company. "So, what's your home like?" he asked casually.

"My home?" Gladiola made a mental list: colorful, friendly, cupcakes, rainbows, singing, dancing, hugging, scrapbooking, community service, friends, family, unaccomplished role... "Different," she finally said. "I'd say that home is much different."

"Yeah, it's common." Willy nodded. "You come in a new place and you probably think why it's nothing like home. Trust me, I was like this when I first enrolled in AURA."

"You're not from...Baltimore?" Gladiola asked. She remembered Licene telling her that she came from a town an hour away from here named 'Washington DC'. At least the Troll Princess gave credits to the humans for coming up with creative names for their towns.

"Nah, most of us aren't. Licene comes from DC, Art here actually comes all the way from St Petersburg, which is across the ocean, Alice is from New York, Mattie came to the US when she was ten from Canada after her Jamaican mom divorced her Canadian dad, and I come from a small town just outside of Wimberley in Texas."

"Where's that?" Gladiola asked curiously.

"It's much farther west and not as populated as here." He waved his hand at the city beneath him. "Living there wasn't easy. My dad runs a livestock ranch and sells meat at the market while my mom works as a full-time elementary school teacher. My dad wanted me to inherit the career of livestock raiser like he did, but I was more driven into art. We did have some heated arguing until he got convinced when I got all the scholarships I needed to help pay for my education here."

"So you crushed your dad's expectations?" Gladiola was too stunned. "He sounds like he needed someone he could trust into running his ranch and you sound like you backstabbed him!"

"What?" Willy was shocked by her words.

"I get that your world is different, but where I'm from, I'd _never_ crush my parents and people's expectations of me! If I were so unconscious as you, I would have given up and turned gray out of misery!" She got up and marched her way to Licene, who was sitting on the floor and pulling out a berry smoothie bottle that she got from the vending machine just for Gladiola. "Men," Gladiola muttered as she drank her smoothie.

"Welcome to my life," Licene nodded to her. Meanwhile, Art snorted at Willy. "Way to go, Prince Charming!"

Alice and Mattie came and they all proceeded to eat. Using one of Alice's Sharpie markers and a sheet of paper, Gladiola did some sketching of her last prison.

"So I was carried in a cage through a hallway with framed rewards on the walls," she said as she sketched her memories on the paper. "I recall Mr. Darwin's office being on the right side and Dårlig's _room_ is on a trapdoor just at the end of the hallway."

"I see what you're talking about." Mattie politely took the pencil, which surprised Gladiola due to how the gothic girl was creeping her out so far, and pointed out some areas. "This hallway is part of the client restricted area."

"Client restricted?"

"Customers can't go in," Licene explained. "Meaning only the staff and owners can go in. Or also meaning, Chef and Creek's hideout."

"So far, there are only three possible entrances into the restricted area," Mattie continued. "The first one is if you take the way to the restrooms and before you go in, you see a red door labeled RESTRICTED AREA. The second one is the parking lot in the back of the restaurant. For that one, only the employees can get in. And the third one is the way Gladiola escaped in the first place: Dårlig's room."

"Are you mad?" Licene flicked a green pea at Mattie. "Gladiola can't go that way! Suppose that Chef's boy lackey catches her?"

"Didn't she already manage to escape him in the first place?" Art asked.

"No, Licene's right." Gladiola said glumly. "I merely managed to escape because they were distracted while I picked the lock of my cage with my scissors and fled out from the window and into a gutter. I narrowly managed to escape and I almost drowned in the Harbor."

The humans, excluding Licene, gasped at the image of pain currently being described. "Besides," Gladiola continued, "even if I don't run into Dårlig and the other female Troll, I can't pick on the lock of his trapdoor since it's on the other side!"

Licene snapped her fingers. "Or, we could do it like they do it in the movies!"

"How do they do what in what?" Gladiola frowned in confusion.

"She means how some heroes spy on villains at the restaurant by acting as employees," Art said. "All we'd have to do is have a couple of us pretend to be customers at the restaurant and distract Chef and the other employees while you and the other guys sneak in the back, dress up as employees, and search around for info."

"Will it work?"

"Judging by how there's a 50% chance that we'll be caught and engage in a kung fu fighting scenario in which we become heroes..." Alice pondered. "I'd say the odds are in your favor."

"But when would we do it, though?" Licene asked. "For one, it has to be soon before Gladiola turns into plastic, but it can't be at a time when we have class. Who has an afternoon class tomorrow?"

Willy and Mattie raised their hands. "So do I." Licene raised her hand as well. "I say we strike at morning. Mattie, when does the restaurant open?"

"9am."

"OK, we leave about 45 minutes in advance, take the light rail, and go to the restaurant. Two of us will act like customers while the last one sneaks in the back with Gladiola via the door near the restrooms. Does that sound like a plan?"

"Rock on, I like it!" Gladiola's small fist gave Licene's big one a fist-bump. "Let's do this!"


	7. Never Go To Darwin's Office

Trolls: Gladiola Trollkonge

Chapter 7: Why Trolls Should Never Go To Darwin's Office

Licene got lucky when her two apartment-mates were absent due to evening classes, which meant that Gladiola was able to roam around to keep herself busy while the human tried to work on her writing assignment for that lame WHY SHOULD YOU BE INTERESTED IN ART class. Art and Alice even stopped by to hang out while Mattie was off for her metal-workshop class and Willy was, well, somewhere. Personally, after the heated conversation she and Willy had, Gladiola could care less if he came or not.

"This is by far the most _revolting_ assignment the teacher ever gave us!" Licene groaned as she tried typing her document onto her computer, only to end up with just the assignment's title. She then mocked the teacher's high-pitched voice. "'In your own words, explain why men find nude women essential in art'. He's lucky I didn't call him a pervert!"

Gladiola, who was trying to relax on the big couch while scrapbooking, giggled at the mock exhibit. "I seriously don't see what you guys are making a fuss about. I mean, I've met Trolls covered in glitter and stark naked."

"Humans and Trolls don't exactly have the same anatomy, Glady," Alice said as she worked on a rope ladder made of lanyards, not for a project but in case of a 'genetically-modified dinosaur attack'. "Let's just say that female and male humans have contrasting organs that are essential for young reproduction and arousal that leads to the arousal."

Gladiola briefly glanced up from her scrapbooking so that her eyes could scan those odd female chests. She never knew that such volume existed in the upper body. All the Troll and Bergen females she knew with the approximate age of her new human friends didn't even have that volume.

"Come to think of it, this could be inspiring for the paper." Art realized. "Gladiola, how do Trolls manage to copulate in order to, you know have kids? Because the human way is a little weird to explain."

Gladiola paused her scrapbooking and searched through her hair, throwing miniature objects out and onto the carpet, making all the humans blink when they saw the impossible amount of stuff she carried in her mass of hair: hairbrushes, two umbrellas, five bear traps, a case full of scissors, a frying pan, a cowbell, a framed picture, containers full of beads and threads, and about seventeen handmade scrapbooks. After she got the stuff out of her hair, Gladiola searched through her scrapbooks and picked up a cherry red covered one with a Troll silhouette cut out of pink paper and the title **GLADIOLA'S KINDERGARTEN SCRAPBOOK**. "Got it!"

"Ooh, I just found out a good line to start my assignment!" Licene snapped her fingers and typed on her computer. "'In my own words, I think that men find nude women essential in art because they have nothing on them to protect them from the unpredictable.' Thanks for the Troll inspiration, Glady."

"Anytime." Gladiola used her hair to swing her way to the table and opened her scrapbook. Due to the small size of the object, Art and Alice had to squint until Art decided to just take pictures of it with his phone (yeah, turns out that humans also take pictures with their 'cell phones'). "So, Art, I learned how Troll reproduction works when I was five and I scrapbooked it. Trolls create a seed with a baby in it using all the happiness and love they are ready to give the child, then they wait a week until it's ripe enough to be planted in what is called the Birth Crops Fields, and wait until the next day or so until a plant blooms out of the seed with the baby in it."

"So, it's like an agricultural baby harvest," Art said in fascination. "But how can you tell if it's a boy or a girl?"

"Female Trolls are born from flowers while boys spring up from any form of sprout."

"Funny, it reminds me of an old myth about babies being born from either a cabbage or a rose depending on the gender." Licene added in more to her assignment. "'I mean, it's quite obvious that when nude, the female bodies' natural floral fragrance arouses the artist with enough inspiration to add in more colors to his work.'"

Gladiola chuckled as she went back to the ground to collect her items and put them back in her hair while Art and Alice took pictures of her small scrapbook in order to examine it a bit more. "It's so well done...Not even once loose end or an overdose of glue. Glady, you made this scrapbook when you were only _five_?"

"Pretty much," Gladiola admitted as she quickly used her last item, a hairbrush, to straighten her loose ends before stuffing it in there. The princess put a finger on her forehead and felt the texture of plastic very slowly waning its way towards the tip of her eyebrows. Sighing, she picked up the scrapbook she had been working on to the page that gave her the most grief: a glittery image of her family and friends, Trolls and Bergens, giving her a bunch of toothy grins while standing by the Troll Tree. Her eyes looked at her scrapbook grandfather standing next to the scrapbook stripped gladiola, making the princess feel worse about the possibilities that she might never make it back home and fill up her people's expectations.

Out of instinct, Licene stopped working on her computer and gently picked up Gladiola in her palms. "Hey, don't worry. Everything's going to be alright," the human reassured her.

"You think?" Gladiola was now gaining some optimism. Before Licene could say anything, the front door of the apartment burst open and Mattie and Willy came in. Seeing the latter made Gladiola look away, for she was still upset about the conversation she had with him back on the top of the Hourglass building. Eventually, the Troll noticed the bandages wrapped on Mattie's wrist. "What happened to your wrist?"

"I accidentally cut myself when I saw Dårlig through the window!" Mattie grimaced in pain while Willy closed the door and quickly made sure that nobody else other than themselves were witnessing the conversation.

"Chef's acolyte was here?" Gladiola panicked. Licene still held her in one hand while the other hand saved her homework and put her computer in SLEEP mode. "They found me!"

"No, he didn't," Willy reassured her, but the Troll didn't listen to him.

"I was in my metal-workshop class and working on a new cord-less drill when I spotted the guy walking towards one of the small shopping areas in the neighborhood," Mattie explained as she walked towards the fridge and pulled out a weird brown can labeled 'root beer', making Licene grimace and Gladiola frown while listening to Mattie's story. "I slightly cut myself on the wrist to make it look like it was an accident..."

"Wait, you're telling me that you _purposely_ cut yourself with one of those doomsday machines in the metal-workshop facility?" Art exclaimed.

"I used my Swiss Army knife, you dummy!" Mattie rolled her eyes as she sat down next to Licene on the couch. "So I cut myself and convinced my teacher that it's serious and I need to go to the infirmary and got a ride from one of the seniors in exchange for doing his laundry for the next three months."

"Good luck washing an old male's clothes." Gladiola stuck her tongue out, making Licene chuckle at her misunderstanding of the term.

"While I bandaged my wrist, he drove me on his Moped and tailed the not-so-ugly Bergen to the Segrator Alley..."

"The Segrator Alley?" Alice's eyes widened. "Dude, that's like the most unsafe alley in Charles' Village!"

"You went all the way to a village outside of town?" Gladiola asked.

"No, she refers to the neighborhood." Licene got up and pulled out one of the papers she had clipped on the fridge with cute animal magnets and unfolded it, showing to Maligna a rather geometrical map. "That's Charles' Village right here." She pointed at an area outlined with a brown line before trailing her finger a little bit more south to go to an area full of blue forms. "That's the Inner Harbor, where I found you. Unless you take the light rail or any kind of public transportation, you'd have to go through a series of streets just to get to AURA before finding your way to Charles' Village."

"And Segrator Alley is right between the barber shop and the old abandoned church," Mattie said ominously. "Local legends say that the soil just beneath the street is full of leftover corpses from battles between Native American tribes and people who got shot during the MLK riots. That's why there's a bunch of wacky fortune-tellers and pawnshop owners running their shops there, luring unsuspecting tourists."

"Or disoriented college students," Alice said. "You guys ever heard of Dick Jackson? He was a student at the neighboring community college. Guy got drunk at one of his off-campus buddies' house and he had the stupidity of taking a shortcut through Segrator Alley with his girlfriend. The alley's wanderers mugged him while others gang-raped his girlfriend. One ended up his last year at college with a ticket to a local psychiatric ward while the other ran off a bridge in her car."

Gladiola gulped and instantly hid in Licene's hair. This story was giving her even more chills than the time when she and her friends tried to scare one another with cheesy ghost stories on Halloween. Licene gently patted Gladiola for comfort.

"So my pal drops me off and I hid behind a trash can and waited for like ten or twenty minutes before Dårlig finally stepped out of this psychic ladies' shop with a brown book in his hand," Mattie said.

This got Gladiola's attention and made her sit down with her legs crossed on Licene's shoulder to think. "First a human warlock shelters the bad guys and now one of their lackeys goes all the way across town just to get a book from a psychic?" She pondered out loud. "Something's not right and yet I'm sure Chef wants to use magic from this world to do something horrible to the Bergen royalty...as well as my parents."

"Hang on," Willy put his hands out. "If Dårlig was going through the AURA campus just to get to Segrator Alley, then how come he hasn't, you know, picked up Gladiola's scent or something?"

The Troll princess grimaced at him. "Bergens aren't dogs, Willy," she said before pondering again. "But come to think of it, only Chef should be able to sniff me out. But...no..."

"Chef could sniff you out?" Art quickly got up and checked through the blinds covering the window.

"During her two exiles, Chef had to be replaced by another cook for the position of royal chef against tradition."

"Being a Bergen royal chef is a _tradition_?" Licene arched an eyebrow.

"Back home, we currently have this Bergen royal chef named Puddle who had to fill up Chef's role after her first banishment and now has her job permanently because of her permanent exile," the princess explained. "Once when I was little, he told me and my friend Calico that the Bergen royal chefs were like being a Bergen monarch. The duty and job gets passed on in each generation. Once a royal chef has a new child to carry on the tradition, he puts the child through severe training as the future chef once the first can no longer serve."

"Putting your kid in cooking boot camp?" Art shivered. "And people wonder why my grandpa doesn't want me to join the army!"

"His grandpa ended up in a gulag during World War II. Don't ask him," Willy warned Gladiola, who took the advice at hear while he went back to the main topic. "Wait, Chef _could_ sniff you out or not."

"She...she could have," Gladiola said uneasily. "Puddle said that the duty of royal chef was never taken seriously until...until..." She didn't dare to say it.

"Until the Bergens found your people," Licene guessed. She picked up Gladiola in the palm of her hand and gently stroke her hair. Her gentle touch slightly calmed down the Troll.

"Puddle said that once the Bergens discovered the Trolls and they had no idea on how to contain them, the royal chef back then aided the monarch of that time to build Bergen town to surround the tree so that, no matter where they tried to go, the Trolls would be surrounded by the giant Bergens. The royal chef was also the one who managed to trap us in our tree with a giant cage, and because he did such _wonderful_ community service, he was now the local hero, Minister of Happiness, and Guardian of the Trolls."

"I can't believe it," Alice said.

"So, in a way, aside from Trollstice being a Festival of Eating Trolls For Happiness, it was the anniversary of the chef's ego and the same applies to his family. Trolls continued to get eaten annually for so many centuries, the royal chef's lineage ended up growing a new instinct of sniffing out Trolls that were the most juicy in happiness."

"And then the Bergens could be fed the food of their dreams." Willy was disgusted.

"It's like the two sides, the chef and the people, are the dogs to the human and mortal worshippers to a god," Art said while making hand gestures. "Think about it. A dog and a mortal worshipper respectively want a treat and benediction from the human and the god. In this case, it's a double combo. The Bergens are the mortal dogs wanting a treat that while bring them benediction, and the only person who can give them that happy treat is the godly human played by Chef."

"That's an oddly good comparison," Gladiola said. She had never seen things that way. People willing to act like animals obeying one shepherd just to get one rare treat? This must have been how Chef and her ancestors treated the Bergens at every single Trollstice: goading the into submission just to get a taste of happiness. No wonder she wanted to usurp the Bergen crown. By being the royal chef, she had the people venerating her as a unique goddess who gave them a once in a year gift, but if she had been queen, she could have tricked the people into giving her anything she wanted just for the price of one Troll's life.

Honestly, did that Bergen ever pause to think that if the fed the Bergens Trolls every day, the colorful species would have been driven to extinction? Probably not.

"Maybe we should reconsider our plan," Willy said in a tone of uneasiness. "I mean, imagine if we go to the restaurant and Chef manages to sniff out Gladiola."

"We've got to try!" Gladiola stood up on Licene's shoulder. "There's a crazy Bergen and treacherous Troll out there who've got access to some sort of portal that leads them to and from my home world and that could probably give them a chance to lead a knife-wielding army of chefs straight to Bergen Town and harm the royal families!"

"A cooking apocalypse!" Alice exclaimed before saying in contempt. "Odd no one's thought about it before. At least these guys are creative."

"Relax, Willy. Gladiola can do this," Licene told Willy. "She has to anyway. What kind of princess is she to not protect her people?"

"You got it, sister." Gladiola smirked and high-fived Licene with the latter's finger.

"Uh, I hate to break the happiness here, but Willy does have a point." Art got up. "How are we supposed to sneak in Gladiola?"

"Easy." Gladiola climbed on top of Licene's head. Once she stood at the very tip of the human's head, she swung her hair, causing to grow bigger, larger, and colorful. The humans gasped in awe as the small Troll turned her mass of hair into a rainbow twister before deciding to let it go, giving Licene a very fluffy, curled hairstyle that reached past her shoulders and shone with the Troll's natural pink-and-blue hair.

"Girl, I give you an A for handmade wigs!" Mattie gave her a thumbs-up. She used the camera application of her phone to show Licene what she currently looked like.

"Nice work, Gladiola, but maybe if it weren't so pink..." Licene got cut off when the pink from Gladiola's hair morphed into a dark chocolate brown color. "OK, I _so_ wished I had Troll hair instead of having to pay for the hairdresser."

Gladiola poked her head from underneath the mass of hair ten times her size. "The perfect camouflage."

"OK." Licene cracked her knuckles. "Here's how it's going to work."

 _The next day, at precisely 9am at the Inner Harbor_

" _In the morning, Willy, Mattie, Gladiola, and I will go to the restaurant right on opening hours. That way, we avoid causing too much attention."_

They stood before Darwin's World Food and Deli Market, which looked exactly like the image they found on the website. On the website, it looked like the cheesy image of a traditional English pub with wooden walls painted with dark green paint. But now that they were there in person, they saw that the wood looked old enough for termites to have chewed on in fifty years, the paint was tacky and wearing off, the glass windows still had stains despite being clean, the white curtains inside barely matched the pub outside, and the carved letters were painted in screaming lemon paint.

"' **DARWIN'S WORLD FOOD AND DELI** , **WHERE YOU'LL WISH YOU NEVER SHOPPED AND ATE MULTICULTURAL FOOD ANYWHERE ELSE** '," Willy read the sign out loud and used a loud tone to imitate the ego reflected by the place's name.

"Now that I know we got a bunch of psychos in there and thanks to Willy's impression, I'm starting to ask myself why I even came here," Mattie said sadly.

" _We'll go inside as the first customers. Gladiola will be acting as my wig while me and Willy act as Mattie's little clique_."

They opened the door, which caused the small bell hanging above it to let out an annoying jingle. So far, the interior of the restaurant looked as off as its exterior. The only decent thing about its decoration was the fresh black wooden floor and the paintings of international monuments hanging on the walls.

"Welcome to Darwin's World Food and Deli Market," a glum human in his forties wearing a dull grey usher uniform spoke when they approached the front desk. He smiled a bit when he saw Mattie. "Nice for you to come again, Miss Mattie."

"'Sup, Andrew," Mattie greeted while putting her shoulders over Willy and Licene's shoulders as they tried to imitate her attitude. "These are my buds Johnny and Deppie. We decided to have a late breakfast here at my favorite place on opening hours in order to talk about our chakra problems."

"Yo," Willy said in his best I-don't-care-what-life-is-like impression. Gladiola, who was spying from underneath the dark brown and blue wig she was hiding on Licene's head, had to cover her mouth in order to avoid laughing. She had to admit: Willy was rather silly.

"Miss Chef will sure be glad to see you," Andrew said. He escorted them through the room full of wooden tables covered with tablecloths, each based on a certain country's flag, until he got them to a small booth near a corner. "I'll go fetch her along with your menus." They sat down and observed as Andrew left towards the left side of the room and vanished through a small hallway.

"OK, that there is the small corridor leading to both the bathrooms and the restricted area," Mattie said very quietly. Licene slightly lifted her dark shades in order to have a better view before putting them back on while Gladiola poked through the wig. "Chef has a tendency on having chats with her clients, so when she comes and starts talking to us, Licene excuses herself for a moment and goes to the bathroom."

"Then we strike." Licene said. The sound of a door opening was heard and they stood in position.

Chef came out, with quite a grin on her face. While the two humans who had never seen her before had to blink before hiding their shock, Gladiola made sure that she neither moved nor gasped when she saw the familiar Bergen with heather skin and mauve and stone blue hair. It was rather surprising that A, her cooking uniform in the human world looked a whole lot cleaner than it did in Bergen Town, and B, for some reason the villain did nothing to disguise her species' large ears, pudgy nose, crooked teeth, and the fact that even among humans, she didn't hide her large bare hands and feet full of sharp purple nails that could pierce through her skin. For the ex royal chef of Bergen Town, she easily violated many sanitary rules in public human places other than this tacky restaurant.

Chef didn't even hide her yellow eyes crowned with red irises, which stared at the humans as she put on a welcoming smile that would scare an old man out of his wheelchair. "How nice to see one of my most frequent and preferred customers come over on opening hours," Chef said as she waved a hand at Mattie while the other held three menus. "Mattie, how've you been?"

"Eh, the usual. Making jewelry out of metal, going to Edgar Allen Poe's grave to worship him, and remind myself that I still owe my mother an apology for seeing that she tried to make me the best morbid person in the universe." Mattie shrugged. "And when I woke up this morning, I told myself I'd drag my two buds Johnny and Deppie here with me to my favorite restaurant and meet my favorite chef in the entire world."

"Hi," Licene said.

"Mattie says you're like a source of inspiration for her," Willy added.

Chef chuckled, flattered that she was getting complimented while Gladiola gagged from her hiding spot. "It's so nice to see people respecting you for your work," she said with a smile. She handed them their menus until she paused right when she was about to give Licene her menu. Gladiola watched from her hiding spot as Chef's nostrils moved only a few inches. It didn't take a Troll genius to understand that Chef had just used one of her family's instincts of sniffing out Trolls.

"You have an odd perfume," she told Licene. Once she heard the Bergen's comment, the Troll princess put her own small nose on her small arm and cautiously sniffed the wig. Her skin did have the scent of blueberry tarts served with pollen nectar and her hair had the fragrance of a raspberry field in summer. _Please don't tell me Chef can smell all this..._

Mattie took a sniff as well and pretended to scoff in shock. "Deppie! What have I told you? This brandy berry women's perfume from Sephora clashes with your chakra!"

"I can't help it!" Licene protested. "I told my dad I wanted that cologne you told me about, but he was all 'proper girls use proper girls' perfume!"

"Just soak yourself with this and don't come back until you get this revolting scent off you!" As planned, Mattie gave 'Deppie' a bottle of men's cologne and the latter excused herself to go to the restroom. "Please excuse her, chef."

"Anytime," Chef shrugged as she seemed to have fallen for the trick. "So, while you wait for your friend to clean up, what do you think you'll be having for brunch?"

 _Meanwhile_

It was a relief that Mattie knew that once the restaurant opened, one of the waitresses went to the bathroom to clean her hands in the place's restroom. This meant that once Licene got into the girls' bathroom, she saw the waitress washing her hands and didn't hesitate to stuff her nose with a sleeping drug-endorsed tissue, knocking out the unsuspecting creature. Gladiola got out of her hiding spot, giving Licene a chance to switch clothes with the waitress, place the unconscious body on a toilet, lock the cabinet, and sneak from underneath. "What the heck are you doing?" Licene snatched the cologne bottle after she caught the Troll Princess pouring herself with at least a quarter of it.

"Chef almost sniffed me out, so I'm covering myself," Gladiola said before jumping back on Licene's head and struggled to morph her hair into a black bob haircut that matched the one of the waitress who was now sleeping in the bathrooms. They quickly peeked out of the door before cautiously making their way to the client restricted area and found themselves in the hallway that Gladiola had recalled. Licene covered her nose in disgust and so did Gladiola.

"You never mentioned that this place stank of boiled artichokes and wine," Licene quietly complained. "Seriously, how do they manage to keep such a dump running?"

Gladiola ignored the comment and tried to pay her attention to her surroundings. On their left side, the sound of distant clanging pots, chopping, and water hitting metal was heard. On the right, she spotted the walls decorated with the most rewards and a velvet painted door. "There's the door to Mr. Darwin's office."

"Are you sure?" Licene walked towards the door. In the process, she picked up a broom that was just laying around in case she needed to pretend like she was sweeping whenever one of the employees passed by. To answer her question, the door was unusually fancy, with small carvings of lions on the velvet stained wood and a paper sign hanging on the golden doorknob.

 **If you are reading this, that means the local warlock is out for personal reasons. Door remains locked until the warlock returns.**

Underneath those words was a cartoony drawing of Mr. Darwin giving the girls a toothy grin and wacky thumbs up, as if he were excited for a football game rather than warning them to not step in his little sanctuary.

Gladiola shrunk her hair back to normal and slid down Licene's arm in order to land on the doorknob. Once Licene pulled out a pair of large scissors from her purse, the human gave it to the Troll princess, who took about a minute to pick the lock with the scissors until they heard a creepy click and they stepped inside the office as cautiously as they could.

Now that she was here, Gladiola had a better look at the office of the warlock who hosted Chef and Creek. Like the door, the wooden walls were stained with velvet and decorated with carvings of lions, only these lions looked more like Roman amphitheater lions devouring gladiators than the regal ones outside. A thick purple carpet fashioned to represent the seven chakras covered the matching floor while dark Victorian armchairs stood upon them with the matching desk. Aside from the window covered with grey curtains, the only other decoration was the old library covering every wall with book-filled shelves.

"This would be so cool if this weren't a villains lair," Licene said as she locked the door behind them. "Where do we start?"

"We check for anything related to what they're planning and how do I get back home." Gladiola freaked a bit when she felt her forehead getting more of a plastic texture. "I'll check the books and you the office."

The two then proceeded to search through everything they could find while maintaining an ear on the door at the same time. Gladiola hopped from shelf to shelf and had to tilt her head occasionally in order to read the titles. So far, she only ran into books that were organized either by genre, title, or author. At least, that's what she thought. She still didn't get the chance to have a glimpse of human literature.

"Looks like he's really into spears made of shakes," Gladiola said when she frowned in curiosity at one column of shelves in particular. "He's got a bookcase full of them."

"I think you mean William _Shakespeare_ ," Licene corrected the small Troll while she skimmed through the papers that were neatly organized on the desk and sadly mostly consisted of tax receipts, newspaper articles, and disgusting noodle recipes. "Ugh. And I thought just having the deli market was horrible enough." She then responded to Gladiola's remark. "Shakespeare was a British playwright and poet from the 16th century. He wrote many comedies, tragedies, and historical plays that managed to last 400 years after his death. _Macbeth_ is my personal favorite. If we ever get the chance before you have to go back, I'll have to read it to you."

"But if Mr. Shakespeare wrote so many plays, then why does Mr. Darwin only have books related to two titles?"

This got Licene's attention. Putting her search through the desk on pause, she walked over to the bookcase and gave a look through it herself. "Odd. Almost every single one of these books relates to _The Taming Of The Shrew_ and _Romeo and Juliet._ "

"If Darwin thinks he can tame bad-tempered women, he's out of luck with Chef," Gladiola said sarcastically. Licene giggled at her comment.

"That would be hilarious, but I think you make a point about whether or not this might related to Chef."

"What makes you say that?"

The human looked through the bookcase and pulled out two books that she placed on the carpet for Gladiola to see and flip through some of the pages. "Both of them are complete opposites, one of the being a comedy while the other is a tragedy and both discussing loyalty and marriage. I personally didn't read _The Taming Of The Shrew_ , but I saw the play once with my parents and it mostly taught how sexist men were back in the old days, believing that wives must be tamed to obey them. _Romeo and Juliet_ , however, was the second best play from Shakespeare that I ever read after _Macbeth_."

"Really?" Gladiola flipped through the mentioned book until she landed on a page with a fancy illustration of two young humans, one being a beautiful golden maiden standing on a stone balcony reaching out for the dark-haired young man holding her hand in order to support his climb towards her. A small smile came on Gladiola's lips. It made her think of all those love stories Trolls back home would tell their children, especially when they came with songs. The princess had always enjoyed hearing the love story of her parents and the Bergen royalty, which sometimes caused her to hum 'True Colors' or 'They Don't Know' to herself. "Is that the comedy?"

"Nope." Licene gave her a flat response. "Their parents hated each other, the lovers married secretly, and it's only after some severe conflicts and the lovers killing each other just because they thought the other was dead that the families finally came together. Aside from the death of history's most famous star-crossed lovers, the only tragedy I've seen in this play was that Hollywood ruined the play with each attempt to reenact it."

Gladiola lost her smile. She really hated tragic love stories. Even Branch, her father and the Troll expert on being grumpy, had disgust for romantic stories that never ended well.

She looked at the page next to the illustration. The page was full of beautifully printed words full of romantic confessions between the lovers. "'My bounty is as boundless as the sea,'" she read with full passion. " _'My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite._ ' It's so...beautiful."

A strange thud was heard.

"What was that?" Gladiola quickly closed the book and let Licene put them back on their shelves while the Troll princess went back to play the role of Licene's wig. The human straightened herself up, waiting for someone to burst the door open until she looked up and saw that one of the books in the upper shelf nearest the window was literally pushing itself out and land right on the carpet. A coughing sound was heard and followed by a rolled up ball of paper.

"That...was weird." Licene carefully walked over and picked up the book. She and Gladiola gasped together when they saw that it was a brown book with an illustrated Troll head surrounded by leaves for a cover.

"It's the book that Mattie caught Dårlig bringing back from that shop in Segrator Alley!" Licene quickly flipped through the pages while Gladiola looked through the pages as fast as she could.

"Oh my Troll!" Gladiola exclaimed. "The book's cover, those drawings with curvy ends, the typography...Licene, this is a Troll Apothecary Manual."

"A Troll Apothecary Manual?" Licene asked.

"Yeah. At least one page discusses a plant know to Trolls that can use for medicine and each plant in the book is categorized in alphabetical order, with details on the date the Trolls first discovered it and how they applied it in their regular lives. And that dialect..." Her eyes got bigger than her own hair. "It's ancient Troll dialect! No one has ever read ancient Troll dialect for generations!"

"Gladiola, calm down... What the heck?" Licene stopped at a certain page. Well, it was hard to say 'page'. Right between the article of Nightshade berries and Nomadic Lilies, a species of white lilies that are know to float away with the wind whenever spring ended, four pages were missing. Obviously, someone had ripped them and the new owners of the book had scrambled red marker notes on the other two pages.

 **Where are the pages?**

 **Need pages!**

 **Need map!**

 **Book's seller MUST have a copy of the book!**

"Whatever the bad guys wanted, it's not there," Gladiola noted. "But it must be essential if they were to vandalize an ancient book with paranoid notes."

"I'll take a picture of this and send it to Art and Alice." Licene pulled out her phone and took pictures of the notes while Gladiola got off the human's head and walked over the balled up paper. "I bet they can find the copy of the book at the shop when they go check it out this afternoon."

Gladiola unfolded the piece of paper and gasped. Each half was split to draw a different map. The top half looked like a hand-drawn map of Bergen Town while the bottom one showed Baltimore. The map of Bergen Town had numerous red X all over it, the majority being on the castle. Gladiola noticed that a red dotted line connected the Troll Tree through the underground tunnel, straight into the mouth of a hill monster, and onto some sort of tower building before zigzagging through the drawn streets and into Darwin's World Food and Deli.

"I think I know where the portal is!" Gladiola waved at Licene right when a buzzing noise came from the latter's purse and before Licene pulled out her phone.

"Mattie texted me! Chef is going to ask us what we want to eat and Darwin was just spotted at the front door! Get on my head, now!"

Gladiola quickly folded the paper and stuffed it in Licene's purse before climbing back on top of the human's head and acting as her wig once again. Licene, in a hurry, stuffed the book back in it's place, made a run for the door and quickly shut it before walking as discreetly and as fast as she could out of the client restricted area and back in the ladies' room. She cautiously knocked on the door of the cabinet where she had left the waitress. Since no one was answering, she sneaked underneath it and found the waitress still unconscious.

As fast as she could, Licene re-switched her clothes with the waitress and Gladiola changed her hair as the hair of 'Deppie'. Then came the part that sickened Licene the most: pulling out a wine bottle full of grape juice and smearing it all over the waitress and laying it on the floor to make it look like she was drunk.

They managed to get back to the restaurant as casually as they could right when Chef was asking what they wanted to eat. "There you are, Deppie!" Mattie said in glum enthusiasm. "We were just about to order! I'm going to have my usual salami and onion soup and Johnny here will have the Hawaiian pizza."

"Let me see." Licene quickly flipped through the menu. "Caesar salad for me."

"Soup and salami, Hawaiian pizza, and Caesar salad," Chef said without taking notes. "Excellent choices. And for drinks?"

"Water," they all said in unison.

Chef grinned at Mattie. "You brought good customers. I'll be back with your orders in about ten or twenty minutes." Chef got up right when Mr. Darwin came in. Both of them gave a cold stare to one another and marched back to the client restricted area, and judging by how Chef was screaming at some waitress named Lena for intoxicating herself on the job, it only meant that it was the waitress Licene knocked out.

"What did you learn?" Mattie quietly asked Licene.

"We'll talk about it at the next meeting," Licene said. Just when she said that, a shout came from the client restricted area.

" **WHO BROKE INTO MY OFFICE?** "

Andrew made a rush there, leaving the humans and the hidden Gladiola alone. "We'd better go!" Willy said.

"Well it wasn't like I was coming back here now that we know the bad guy lives here!" Mattie hissed. They quickly got up and made a run for it, with Gladiola clinging onto Licene's hair for support.

 _Meanwhile, unknown to Gladiola and her friends_

By the time Gladiola and her human friends reached the light rail and took a ride back to AURA, the villains noticed too late that their first three customers had vanished once the crime was discovered.

"Betrayed by Mattie, my only favorite human customer..." Chef sounded disheartened while she and Mr. Darwin looked around his office. Aside from a few misplaced papers in his office, the place was normal except for the picked lock in the doorknob, which gave away to the warlock and Bergen that someone broke into his office.

"Whatever could she have betrayed you for?" Creek said when he stepped in. "It's not like she knew you were a Bergen..."

"I don't think Mattie's the problem."

Chef and Creek looked at Mr. Darwin, who knelt down and picked up something with his thumb and index fingers. The object in question was a loose strand of thickness colored in dark blue and magenta.

A strand of hair.

"I'd say that the Troll princess was in the area," he concluded as he showed them the strand of hair. Chef snatched it and took a sniff. The odor of berries made her snarl.

"So," she muttered, "Mattie's friend Deppie uses brandy berry women's perfume, which actually meant she _had Gladiola Trollkonge right under our noses_!"  
"It looks like she quickly managed to make allies in less than a full day." Creek was a bit impressed.

"And now it looks like she's onto us!" chef snarled. "If it turns out, she's probably searching for her way back home and will have the two kingdoms' armies ready for us before we can even act in three days!"

"At least we do know where she's hiding now." Mr. Darwin took the hair sample back and curled his fingers over it, turning the hair into a crystal ball with glowing smoke of dark blue and magenta glitter shaped like Gladiola's face. "Your plan should be successful in three days, and the princess will be a factor, whether you capture again or lead her back home. Summon Dårlig and Feige."

" **Dårlig!** " Chef shouted.

" **Feige!** " Creek shouted as well.

A minute later, the young lackeys came in. Dårlig stood up straight, his arms folded behind his back like in the military, while Feige sat in a Lotus position on his shoulder.

"We have a job for you, you worthless scum!" Chef said.

"Great. What now?" Dårlig muttered. "Is my salary decreasing?"

"Of course not." Mr. Darwin shook his head and showed them the crystal ball. "Princess Gladiola Trollkonge was recently here. It would seem that she was trying to find her way back home. Fortunately, she was careless enough to leave hair strands that I turned into an essence tracker. Use this to track the princess, find her, and bring her back to us in a cage. If you can't, that's fine, but then you must trick her into finding the portal and going in there after we do. At the same time, go back to the shop and find the second copy of the Troll Apothecary Manual."

"And what do we get in return?" Feige asked.

Chef grinned. "Once we usurp the Bergens and the Trolls, you two will inherit the titles of royal chefs. The kitchen will be all yours."

"Just for the two of us? Nobody else?" Dårlig pointed his finger at himself and Feige.

Chef nodded.

"That's all I wanted to know." Dårlig hid back a smug grin. "We'll do it."


	8. Searching For A Book In A Haystack

Trolls: Gladiola Trollkonge

Chapter 8: Searching For A Book In A Haystack

 _Later on in the afternoon, from Art and Alice's perspective_

Even if Baltimore is known as 'Charm City', it does not necessarily mean that it is safe. Of course, most American cities aren't crime-proof, but this city in particular did have a record for murders, muggings, shootings, riots, and sexual assaults that made every newcomer afraid of leaving the hotel they were staying at. But when it came to places like Segrator Alley, located in a neighborhood already unsafe for a college freshman to walk around alone at night, the thing you should always remember is to never go there with nice clothing and a purse full of cash. The local wanderers will instantly assume that you are a rich European tourist just waiting to lose your bling.

Art and Alice knew better than to wear nice clothing in a place like Segrator Alley. Once they ended their respective classes at 3pm, they rushed to their dorms and switched to dark, baggy sweatshirts and pants, old sneakers, and dirty baseball caps, and met up just outside the dorms. By the time Licene arrived in her drawing class before it started at 4pm and with Gladiola hiding in her backpack, Art and Alice had arrived in Segrator Alley.

The alley was awfully narrow that it would take seven lined dwarves to make the width of it. Whenever they stepped on a brick from the bricked ground, it would make cracking sounds related to those made by stepped bones. Whenever a creaking noise was heard, you'd look up and see black, greasy fire escape ladders dangling from the buildings with the possible threat of death. With the amount of unemptied trash cans and dirty laundry hanging from the windows like soiled surrender flags, the Segrator Alley really stank of human garbage and corpses.

"There's the shop Mattie was talking about." Alice pointed at the left side of the alley. Just between a thrift shop with the cracked windows covered with boards and a hand-me-down pawnshop full of rusty trumpets, a small bookstore stood in between. At first, with its peculiar dark brown mahogany tilted architecture, Art and Alice could have easily mistaken it for a knockout impression of a fictional shop in the Parry Hotter series, but once they saw the window displays and the wooden sign hanging just above the door, they realized their mistake.

"'Madam Gigi and Madam Pisa's Shop of Mystics'," Alice read the name on the sign along with the message underneath the shop's logo, an observing eye sticking out of a palm. "'We factor to your foolish desires to change thy fate.' Wow. Some logo."

"Have you seen this stuff?" Art pointed at the stuff hanging in the window displays. "Crystal balls, chunky heeled boots, twigs, and an Orioles jersey... This is a psychic ladies' shop or a thrift shop?"

"It's in between."

Art and Alice yelped and turned their hands to see a man in his early seventies bearing a ragged, sickly grey robe like those of hospital patients. He was so skinny that they could see the contour of his bones beneath his wrinkled flesh and his frizzled hair and beard were so gray that they almost blended with the ground he was sitting on. His weak right arm toyed with a mug he was holding, making a jingling sound belonging to coins. Obviously, this guy was a beggar.

"What are two AURA college students doing in a place like Segrator Alley?" He coughed. After getting a better look at him, the youngsters saw the beggar's blank eyes. He was blind.

"How did you know?" Alice asked.

"For a bunch of poorly dressed fake wanderers, you walk too carefully and your hands bring out the odor scents of your preferred materials." He gave them a toothy grin. "A thing I always liked about artists. They are always so precise. But that does not answer my question. What are you artists doing here?"

Art and Alice glanced at each other before looking at the beggar suspiciously. "Why does it matter to you?"

"Even before I lost my sight, I've seen and heard naive people coming in and out of the Shop of Mystics. All have hoped to find things that would lead them to their greediest desires. Many have achieved those desires. Some never have. Others just ignored them and bad things happened to them."

He put his jug on the dirty ground and crossed his arms over his knees. "There's a good reason why the wanderers here use violent threats to force naive teenagers like you out of here."

"How on earth does this _one_ shop have a negative impact on teens?" Alice pointed at the Shop of Mystics. "You guys have a bunch of similar stores in this."

"I thought a similar thing back in the 1950s. I was a mere 8th grader when I accidentally put my foot in Segrator Alley on my way home from school on a dark, stormy January afternoon. A gang of wanderers attacked me, grabbed me by the collar and shouted me things that I didn't comprehend. Madams Gigi and Pisa pulled me away and brought me into their shop to shelter me until the rain stopped. The wanderers shouted me to not go in there, but I didn't listen."

"And what happened to you?" Art asked.

"They took me in their shop. Gave me some tea, showed me some of them treasures, and told me to not leave before the rain stopped unless I wanted my life to crumble like a set of dominoes."

"You didn't listen to them." Alice concluded.

"Can you blame me? I was the son of a white clergyman. Very conservative, white, racist, and against anything that related to witchcraft. He raised me in fear of all things not white or Christian. Due to that education, I scoffed the old ladies and left the shop. Tragically, the thunder was so powerful on that night that it caused some cracks on the fire escape ladder. It fell and one of them bars hit me straight in my poor eyes."

"Gosh." Alice covered her mouth.

"So you turned blind because you didn't listen to the ladies from the Shop of Mystics?" Art asked.

"Yes. And because I had conversed with the unholy, my father disowned me," the old man sighed. "Take my advice, kids. If you really want to find something in there, do not take it for granted."

The door of the shop suddenly opened. Art and Alice turned to face two women, both in their late forties, staring at them with their respective grey eyes.

"New customers, I see," one of them said.

 _Inside the Shop of Mystics_

Art and Alice wanted to gasp until their jaws hit the floor as Madams Gigi and Pisa walked them through the shop.

Despite its small size from the outside, the Shop of Mystics was almost the size of the entire neighborhood block. Each aisle was connected by arched pathways lit by dangling lanterns and went in so many twists and turns, it made the teens feel like walking through a maze at a county fair. Nearly every shelf was full of books, all mixed up together and unorganized, and some old antiques that you'd find in your grandmother's house. For instance, along the way, they spotted a shelf that had two Parry Hotter books mixed with an astronomy book, an old diary, a college science textbook, and a green Buddha statuette.

Madams Gigi and Pisa were both peculiar women. They were both the same age and not white. Madam Gigi was an African-American woman with gray hair braided into dreadlocks that reached her heels and Madam Pisa was a Native American woman with similarly braided hair, only with darker hair. The only odd thing about these two was that they were the other's traditional cultural attire. Gigi wore a coral blue tribal Native American dress with many feathered jewelry while Pisa wore a traditional orange, lion-themed Kenyan dress with bracelets made of cowrie shells and loop earrings of the same material.

Finally, they reached a seating area occupied by only four cushioned chairs and a mahogany table. A prepared Asian teakettle full of steaming tea and cups waited for them.

"We assume you are looking for something," Pisa said as she led the two teens to their seats while Gigi poured tea into the cups. "But how will it ever help you is the question."

"We might be looking for a book," Art said. Gigi gave all of them a cup full of oolong tea. "An...apothecary book."

Gigi rolled her eyes. "Great. Another one asking for the Troll Apothecary Manual."

"How did you know?" Alice widened her eyes.

"Kid, we try to give magical assistance to anyone who ventures into our shop." Gigi drank her tea. It felt so odd, hearing a magic-expert talking so casual like the sassy cashier lady at the supermarket. "But we are also limited to our resources."

"The things you see around you," Pisa said while waving her hands to the aisles surrounding them, "are centuries of collecting magical knowledge that anyone would fight over for. Ever since Segrator Alley was born with Baltimore, Gigi and I have worked so hard to collect magical treasures that we could use to guide mortals to what they wanted..."

"OK, but that's not related to the Troll Apothecary Manual," Alice cut impatiently. "We already know that you sold one copy..."

"We never sold it." Gigi waved a finger. "The last customer who came in asking for it threatened us into handing it over to him. He claimed he would send a warlock after us if we didn't give him and his assistant the book."

"Mr. Darwin," Art and Alice muttered together.

" _That_ wizard." Gigi agreed with them. "Never mess with him. He just loves to trade things that he'll end up selling away for profit."

"Dårlig and Feige." Pisa shook her heads. "Slaves against their own wishes, forced to work for the people they were raised to hate."

"Opposite in species, yet friends against adversity. Oh, I would love to see the look on Darwin's face when he sees the dirty stains of the two pawns of his chessboard."

"To answer your curiosity, we did have two copies of the Troll Apothecary Manual, but we managed to dispose of the other copy last century."

Alice spit the tea she was drinking out of her mouth. "Why on earth would you throw away a valuable book?"

"Two reasons," Gigi said. "The first is that it's dangerous."

"Trolls are the most wonderful of all the colorful creatures that have inspired humans throughout the ages." Pisa walked over to an aisle and picked something from a shelf. She threw it at Art, who instantly caught it and saw that it was an original Troll Doll. "But Trolls have lived for too many generations under the fear of Bergens hungering for their colorful flesh and blood, source of happiness. Trolls had become so desperate that they had to proceed to the most anti-happy last resort of them all."

"Poisoning Bergens," she and Gigi said in unison.

Art and Alice looked at each other, sharing their mutual disbelief. Clearly, they couldn't imagine a cute, fun creature like Gladiola going as far as to poison someone ten times her own size.

"Second reason of why we got rid of the book and its second copy connects very much to the first reason," Gigi said as she continued to drink her own tea. "Once a Bergen discovered the Trolls lethal plant, he confiscated it along with any documents the Trolls had on it. While he easily burned the scrolls and papers, he could not burn the Troll Apothecary Book. Once it touched the flames, it popped back on his table with a new twin. Horrified, the Bergen ran out of his hometown in order to throw the books into the wilderness."

"Only the forest from that world is alive and bears hidden portals to other realms," Pisa agreed, "so a hill monster ended up swallowing them, mistaking the books for prey, and unintentionally sent them into its belly's portal and right into the lands were colonists began to build Baltimore. Gigi and I have only begun to collect magical items for our shop once we finally purchased it in the Segrator Alley when a terrified French monk begged us to keep the books away from anyone and each other." She took the Troll doll back from the teens and placed it on its original shelf. "We originally put the two books together on this very shelf, thinking that nobody would want a book about plants from imaginative creatures..."

"But we were awfully wrong." Gig shook her head. "In 1998, a teacher stopped by in the Shop of Mystics, hoping to find some illustrated books that would inspire students in their works. We tried to goad him with a book of mythological creatures, but he got interested by the colors and beautiful drawings of the Troll Apothecary Manual...We saw an opportunity to get rid of it and sold it to him."

Alice hit herself on the forehead. Great. The book had been sold off about a decade ago. _Now_ how the hell were they supposed to retrieve it? "Do you at least know what his name was and where the Hell he came from?"

"Well, I know that Mr. Checker didn't come from Hell..." Madam Gigi stopped talking when she and friend noticed that the teens had suddenly left the table and made a run out of the Shop of Mystics. She grinned to Pisa. "I think they got the message."

 _Meanwhile, in Licene's Drawing For Intermediates class_

 _What satisfaction canst thou have to-night?_

 _The exchange of thy love's faithful vow of mine._

 _I gave thee mine before thou didst request it:_

 _And yet I would it were to give again._

 _But to be frank, and give thee again._

 _And yet I wish but for the thing I have:_

 _My bounty is as boundless as the sea,_

 _My love as deep; the more I give to thee,_

 _The more I have, for both are infinite._

Gladiola was safely placed in Licene's backpack, reading a copy of Shakespeare's _Romeo and Juliet_ that Licene had managed to borrow from the school's library so that the Troll princess could keep herself busy while Licene was in class. Sure, the book was larger than her own upper body, but once you made enough space in the backpack for a little Troll to sit and turn the large pages, it was as easy as reading the small printed text of the pages.

So far she had to admit, human literature was something that made her wish it existed back home. Sure, the Bergens and Trolls had books, whether they were scrapbooks or not, but the way humans wrote their stories was full of passionate words that reflected the inspiration and work they put through all this. Shakespeare did have a knack for making the story of two lovers born from two feuding houses so beautiful.

Occasionally, Gladiola would get up from her hiding spot and sneak a peek at the young humans drawing on paper pads while their teacher walked around, giving an interested eye to each of his students' works, and making brief talks to them in order to say what he thought worked with their pieces or what could use some improvements.

It was only a matter of seconds before Gladiola decided to climb her way out of the backpack and sit on Licene's shoulder in order to watch the human draw. While the class was supposed to draw a nude model of a woman laying on the floor, Licene seemed more interested in making the model look like Gladiola. It was amazing from Gladiola's perspective to watch her friend draw. Back in the Why Art Is Essential class, Licene looked like she could sleep during the lectures, but in Drawing For Intermediates, it's like she managed to block her surroundings in order to dedicate herself to her artistic work. Her hands moved quickly, but as carefully as se could when she tried to draw the contour and shades. Her eyes focused only on the page as if everything surrounding it didn't exist.

"You draw beautifully," Gladiola said quietly.

"Thanks, but please get back in my backpack. I don't want my teacher to..."

"How are things going here, Licene?"

Gladiola quickly slipped through the human's brown hair and hid there, hoping to avoid getting noticed by Licene's professor, Mr. Checker. She watched from her hiding spot as the teacher admired her friend's work.

"Very interesting how you modified the model while retaining the pose and shades," he commented. "Though I do wonder why it reminds me so much of a lucky Troll Doll that I've read in this book once."

Licene and Gladiola's head both perked. "I'm sorry, but did this book happen to be something like, I don't know, a Troll Apothecary Book?"

"Yes, why?"

Gladiola silently squealed to herself while Licene continued. "Well, you know how I'm into character designing? Well, I thought I would take some inspiration from old late 1900s toys and I was thinking about my aunt Stacy who collected Troll Dolls when she was my age. I...I don't suppose I could borrow it from you? You know, just to have a look at it for inspiration?"

"Well, that's a pickle, Licene, because I don't have the book."

Gladiola clutched her fists tightly, causing Licene to feel some pain since the Troll princess was pulling her hair in frustration. "You don't?" She asked despite the pain.

"Sadly, no. My father had it in the first place. It was almost the beginning of the 21st century for AURA and he had contributed so much to the new developments that they named..."

"Checker Library." Licene realized out loud. "Did he donate the book there?"

"Yes, along with..." Mr. Checker stopped talking when he realized that Licene was no longer here. In less than two seconds, she had managed to grab her backpack and made a run for the hallway.

"I'll be back after dinner!" she shouted. As they ran down the hallway, Gladiola jumped on Licene's shoulder in order to avoid falling. "We got to find that book in the library before it closes at 6!"

"What time is it?" Gladiola asked.

"5:10." Licene showed her wristwatch. They got closer to the main hall of the building and froze. Licene quickly ran behind a statue of Leonardo Da Vinci in order to avoid being spotted by the people talking to the security guard at the front desk just before the flight of twenty stone steps.

"It's Chef's lackey Dårlig." Licene blinked and found something hiding in the collar of the trench coat that Dårlig was wearing to hide his cooking uniform. "And the Troll female. What are they doing in AURA?"

"It can only mean one thing. Chef's onto us." Gladiola concluded. She looked past the evil duo and the guard. A door leading straight to the street was there. "Licene, please tell me that this isn't our only way out."

"Thankfully not." As discreetly as she could, Licene ran out of her hiding spot and towards a series of brown doors. She pressed a button with an arrow pointing downward, causing the doors to open with a ding. "If we take the elevator to the underground level, we can take the exit from there and make a run for it straight to the library."

"What time is it now?" They got inside a small cabin that went downward once Licene hit the B button and the doors closed.

"5:15. Let's just hope that the guard is stalling them with the visitor permit policy."

"Eesh!"

"What's wrong?"

"My head's skin is feeling rough." Gladiola freaked when she felt her face getting harder and more like plastic. "Licene, I need that Troll Apothecary Manual!"

"Don't worry, just..." The doors suddenly opened once they reached the first floor. Gladiola quickly hid in Licene's hair while the human tried to act casual once Dårlig stepped inside the elevator. The doors closed again and the cabinet was about to go down until it suddenly stopped.

"Seriously? An elevator malfunction? Now?" Licene grumbled.

"No need to whine about such a petty problem." Dårlig shrugged. "There are bigger problems a person can't deal with."

"Global warming?" Licene asked sarcastically.

"I was going to say parental neglect, but that sounds like a good option."

"Oh." Licene lost her sarcasm. "Horrible parents back home?"

"Just one mother who cared less about your mere existence once you were born and left you to labor and take care of yourself while she goes on with her life, pretending you either don't exist or aren't the son she bore."

"How awful." Gladiola heard Licene give an actual tone of sympathy to Dårlig. _Then again_ , Gladiola thought, _it would make sense on how Chef ended up with a Bergen lackey. The guy's mother must have abandoned him._ She knew that Bergens had a past of nothing but glum colors, but Dårlig's story was so emotional, she didn't think that Bergens could be capable of abandoning their own children.

"So, what's your dream in life?" Licene played along and acted as if she really wanted to start a conversation. "Mine's to do character designing."

"What an adorable dream," Dårlig said with a small smile. "Mine would be to kill my mother, run away from my prison, open my own diner, life the teen life I was so constantly denied, and then marry my best friend and love of my life."

"That sounds both creepy and romantic. I'm sure your best friend will love to hear you propose to her."

"I know she will. She was my only friend in life. Unlike my mother, she brings me happiness."

The elevator finally budged and went downward until the doors opened again.

"Well, nice knowing you." Licene took a big step out of the elevator into the white hallway while Gladiola sunk deeper into the backpack. Unfortunately, Dårlig was still walking after them.

"OK, seriously, why are you following me?" Licene turned and confronted Dårlig.

"I'm not following you." Dårlig shrugged and revealed something he held in his palm. A crystal ball, which, much to Licene's shock, had an image of Gladiola's face glowing with colors matching the hair of the Troll Princess. "I'm just following the directions of this little ball."

"OOH, a Parry Hotter fan!" Licene tried to keep playing along. "Seriously, I just loved the movies. I guess you liked the first one? No, don't say... I know! Nellie Longhottom was your favorite!"

Before the Bergen could say anything, Licene grabbed her backpack's left strap and flung it at Dårlig. He fell head first onto the floor and dropped the ball in the process, giving Licene the chance to grab it and make a run for it.

"Hey, I was still in that backpack!" Gladiola complained once Licene pushed the doors open and got Gladiola out of her backpack.

"Gladiola, Dårlig was using this to track you!" Licene showed her the ball, causing Gladiola to gasp in shock.

"These colors..." It hit her. "I must have accidentally left a few strands of my hair behind when we snooped in Mr. Darwin's office!"

"Then let's not waste time!" Once Gladiola was secured on her shoulder and her backpack back in place, Licene quickly ran across the street to the SOTA Building, home to the school's biggest library, the Checker Library. At the same time, she took the opportunity to throw away the ball in a nearby trashcan. Just when she stepped through the doors, she bumped into Art and Alice.

"You guys found anything?" Gladiola asked.

"Yeah, the two witches running the shop said that they had two copies of the Troll Apothecary Manual since colonial times until the first copy was taken by the namesake of the library." Art pointed at the golden entrance of the modern, three-story high library known as Checker Library. "As for the second copy, Dårlig blackmailed the witches by telling them that he'd have Mr. Darwin after them."

"Speaking of the Devil, we ran into him in the building of my class," Licene said. "Apparently the warlock used Gladiola's hair to create a tracking spell for Dårlig to use. We managed to ditch Dårlig and throw away the spell..."

"You _threw_ away a spell?" Alice arched an eyebrow.

"It was a ball! Not important!" Gladiola snapped. "Can we just hurry up? I'm turning into a toy!"

"OK, OK!" They got inside the library and rushed to the glass-bearing lady behind the front desk. "Hi, we're working together on a class project and we were wondering if the Checker Library had some book called 'Troll Apothecary Manual'," Licene said.

"Hold that thought, honey." The woman typed on her computer until it came with a beep. "There it is. 'Troll Apothecary Manual', donated to the Checker Library by its namesake in 1999. You'll find it in the shelf dedicated to the paranormal in the P section of Religion and Culture."

"Thank you." Alice led them to the second floor of the library and into the section, which was an entire aisle full of books. "OK, what did the book look like?"

"It's brown and has the picture of a Troll head surrounded by leaves." Gladiola jumped off Licene shoulder and ran up and down the shelve, digging through each title. "Peruvian idols, the truth behind St Patrick, Parisian Christianity...Why do you humans have so many religions?"

"I don't know. Why is your skin purple?" Alice asked sarcastically as she pulled out a book and pushed it back out. "Catholic Saints from A to Z. No, it's not it."

"The same way you don't have hair!" Gladiola snapped. "The three main branches of monotheism. Ugh!"

"OK, guys! Hit the pause button!" Licene made a time out gesture. "I know this is getting frustrating, but we need to remain focused! First we find the book and then we can worry about screaming or singing at each other!"

"Singing...That's it!" Gladiola cleared her throat until she released a musical vocal tune from her mouth, stunning the humans since they've never heard her melodious voice before. The Troll's voice caused one of the books to suddenly shake its way out of its shelf and gently float downward. Licene took the opportunity to catch it in the air and give Gladiola the cue to stop singing.

"It's the Troll Apothecary Manual!" Licene quickly flipped through the pages until she found what she was looking for. "There they are! The missing four pages! Art, do a quick scan of the pages with your phone!"

Art nodded and held out his phone over the pages before putting the device back in his backpack. "Great! Now all we need to do is!"

A crashing noise got their attention and they saw at the last minute that the bookshelves forming the P section were falling before them.

"Gladiola!" Licene dropped the book and ran to shield Gladiola with her hands before they were all buried alive. Minutes seemed to pass until they were finally dug out.

"Yo, are you guys alright?" A dark-skinned young man in baggy clothes asked as he and his group of matching clothing pals helped them get back up.

"Boogie Max," Licene said. She opened her hands and found Gladiola safely secured in her palm.

"You saved me...again." She looked at Licene in disbelief.

"Yeah, but I'm afraid we lost the book." Art and Alice tried to dig through the pile of mixed books on the floor. Meanwhile, Boogie Max looked at Gladiola in shock.

"Yo, you got a talking Troll doll just like the purple dude, girl," he told Licene.

"Purple dude?" Licene arched a suspicious eyebrow. "Did he have a trench coat over his cooking uniform?"

"Yeah. The dude came bursting in with the security lady running after him and we saw him pull an incredible stunt with his talking Troll doll. While he got you dudes distracted by pushing the shelves on you, his doll managed to whip her hair and lasso it to catch the book. They ran off while we were trying to get you dudes out."

"Great." Licene pinched her nose. "Now Chef has the _two_ copies of the book."

"Don't worry, I still have the page scans on my phone," Art reassured her. "We can diagnose them."

"I don't get it." Gladiola was confused. "Dårlig and the female Troll were supposed to be tracking me down, and yet I'm still here while they just took the book. This...this is weird."


	9. Myth of the Night Soul Tree

Trolls: Gladiola Trollkonge

Chapter 9: Myth of the Night Soul Tree

"So let me get this straight. You're a living Troll doll from a parallel dimension?" Boogie Max asked Gladiola while he, his gang of hip hop lovers, and Gladiola's human friends sat in a discreet booth in the food court.

"Exclude the 'doll' part and yes, I am." Gladiola took a bite from the strawberry tart slice that Licene had gotten for her from the food court. "But I will eventually turn into a toy if I don't return back home as soon as possible."

"Man, that tanks!"

"Speaking of returning home," Willy said. They all looked at him as he pulled a paper out of his bag. It was the same paper Licene and Gladiola had found in Mr. Darwin's office that involved the dotted line and the two maps. "Boogie Max, you're a Baltimore native. Does this tower symbol ring a bell to you?" He showed the paper to Boogie Max.

"Yep, dude. That's the old Westminster Hall." He put the map back on the table.

"The old Westminster Hall? I just went there last week!" Licene nearly choked on her cranberry juice.

"Uh, what's the old Westminster Hall?" Gladiola asked.

"Girl, you can't go around Baltimore without at least going _once_ there." Boogie Max shook his head. "Westminster Hall and Burying Ground is a famous cemetery. My uncle Stan works there as a tour guide."

"It's a small burial ground, but it's famous for holding the grave of horror novelist Edgar Allan Poe," Willy said as he took back the paper. "Or in this case, hide the portal that Chef, Creek, and their lackeys used to get Gladiola out of her home and into our world!"

"Travelling through dimensions under a pile of dead bodies?" Mattie shook her head in disgust. "That's low!"

"Great, so all I have to do is go to the cemetery, find the portal, jump in it, and go back home!" Gladiola smiled optimistically. "Easy peasy!"

"Sorry, Gladiola." Licene grabbed her by the small arm. "But you don't even know what the bad guys are after, especially now that they have the _two_ copies of the book!"

A ringing tone interrupted them. "The scans from the pages!" Art searched through his phone and pulled out the downloaded results. "Apparently the pages were about some sort of plant called...Night Soul Tree?"

Night Soul Tree.

Gladiola's mind flashed back to the conversation she had with her friend Calico at the Coronation Eve party before Chef and co. crashed it. _You know, this tree that the Trolls used to grow back in the ancient days when they were still prey to the Bergens and my people 'confiscated' the tree and locked it away somewhere even my dad doesn't know the location because it was meant to poison Bergens_ , Calico's words echoed. _I can't believe it! Auntie Poppy, Uncle Branch, and your grandpa didn't tell you anything about it!_

"Uh, heh, heh, " she chuckled nervously out loud. "Don't kill me yet, but I _may_ have heard that this plant was made by Trolls to poison Bergens."

"WHAT?" They nearly all exclaimed.

"Wait a minute." Alice remembered. "Back in the Shop of Mystics, the old ladies said that the manual contained information about a lethal plant created by Trolls to kill their enemy until a Bergen confiscated it from them and tried to destroy it with any related document. But he couldn't destroy the book."

"Why not?" One of Boogie Max's friends asked.

"I don't know. The ladies said that once it touched the flames, it just popped out intact and with a clone. That caused the Bergen to go out of town and throw it into a portal monster and that's pretty much close to how the apothecary manual ended in Baltimore in the first place."

"I think I know why it wouldn't destroy." Gladiola put a hand over her hair and pulled onto it as hard as she could. "Troll hair looks smooth and colorful, but it's expandable, harder than steel, and magical. Unless you cut from the roots, you usually need some sort of cutting utensil made of Troll gemstones to prevent the hair from growing magically."

"What does hair have to do with books?" Licene asked.

"Licene, do you have any idea of what materials Trolls use to make their scrapbooks other than tree leaves?"

Mattie covered her mouth in order to hold back the burger she hate. "Book covers made of hair? I might get sick!"

"Sorry, but that's what we use to make sure that precious books don't get destroyed." She shook her head, took a deep breath, and went back to Art. "But I honestly don't know much about the Night Soul Tree. What did the pages say about it?"

"They talk about the tree through a myth." Art cleared his throat and read loud and clear for the others to hear. "'Since life first existed, the Trolls have been known to be the masters of happiness. Our wonderful species have spread joy to other realms through our special talents while the heart of our work stood on the Troll Tree, the happiest existing tree in the world and our home. The Troll gemstones themselves nourished the roots of the Troll tree with the energy created by the happiness harvested in the Troll gemstones from Troll navels.

"'Unfortunately, our kind has been found by a species of inherited misery and no joy. When they dared to start swallowing a few of us, they saw that eating a Troll could give them a year's worth of happiness. The king of the Bergens decided to destroy our lovely green fields in order to create the greyness that is Bergen Town, while one of the Bergens, the king's designated royal chef, had some fellow cooks start building a cage that would keep us trapped within the branches of the Troll Tree.

"'With us trapped in our tree and our fields destroyed, we were fed like animals by the chef who tried to make us fat and juicy for the newly invented Bergen holiday that is Trollstice. On that day, we tried in vain to hide in our home pods, and if we were lucky to survive, we were forced to watch our beloved relatives and friends get swallowed or chewed greedily. This went on for years and we did not know what to do until a fateful day.

"'It occasionally happens during few eras that, in the Crescent Field Crops where our infants our born, a colorful royal couple who have the deepest of true loves will give birth through a stripped gladiola, an enchanted flower that brings life to a royal heir of promise regardless of the gender.

"'During our first five decades of terror due to Trollstice, our current Troll king had five children, the oldest being Prince Aster, who just happened to be born from a red-and-yellow stripped gladiola, matching his hair tones. Fed up with the Bergens' uncaring cruelty towards his people, the crown prince decided to fight fire with fire, using a form of defense that no Troll was supposed to use unless for last resort: summoning the ancient powers buried in the Torch of Happiness that grew from the roots of his birth plant.

"'Using twelve Troll gemstones from the navels of twelve Troll females, a stolen tear from a crying Bergen infant, a hair strand from his mother, the Troll he loved most, a dead branch from the Troll Tree, and the flames of the Torch of Happiness, Prince Aster grew the most dangerous plant that never existed in the Troll Apothecary Manuals until now. He named it the Night Soul Tree because it grew into a dark, massive willow tree half the size of the Troll Tree in the middle of the night, while the Bergens were still asleep. 'The Night Soul Tree is now the key to our freedom,' he told his subjects, 'for with the symbolic ingredients I used, the tree's enchanted leaves and sap will work three ways. The dead branch, symbolizing a Troll's hatred for Bergens, will cause any Bergen to die instantly from poisonous contact. The Bergen tear, symbolizing our misery, will give the Trolls the advantage to enhance our height and strengths to those of Bergens. As for my mother's hair strand, symbolizing our species' capacity of giving true love, will give us permanent immunity from the poison.' When one of his subjects dared to ask what would happen should a Bergen happen to be immune from the poison, Prince Aster scoffed, claiming that no Troll could give a Bergen true love nor could the grey species mutually share it without wanting to eat the colorful one.

"'The Night Soul Tree turned out to be even more dangerous than the Trolls imagined. Once it made contact with sunlight and thanks to being harvested by the flames of the Torch of Happiness, the tree proliferated faster than mushrooms and covered most of Bergen Town, breaking the Trolls' cage in the process. Many Bergens accidently touched the tree while trying to cut it with their axes, which caused to suffer for a good hour until the poison filled their veins and killed their hearts. It was far worse when some Trolls, who allied with Prince Aster to fight the Bergens, turned to Bergen size because of the tree's powers. Once they grew tall, most of their happy personalities turned cruel and twisted and they began to use their hair to strangle and kill the Bergens who hadn't been killed yet by the poison. Even the Trolls who hadn't fought by the prince's side agreed that his actions were madness.

"'Oddly enough, they were relived when the Bergen King's royal chef ended up with a solution. Because the Night Soul Tree was created from the flames of the Torch of Happiness, normal fire from Bergen torches could destroy the parasitical offspring of the tree. Most of Bergen Town had been burned, but at least the proliferation ended. However, fire and axes didn't work on the original, so the chef had his fellow cooks and the royal guards uproot the tree and hide it in an isolated chamber deep within the royal catacombs, thus labeling it a forbidden area to anyone, including the royal family.

"'As punishment, the chef ate Prince Aster, causing him to feel more bitterness towards the Trolls than he and the other Bergens usually did. Because of what happened, the chef build a stronger cage over the tree and declared that, as punishment for letting a Troll royal born from a stripped Gladiola create such mayhem, the Bergens would go back on their promise to never eat a member of the Troll royal family and would have at least one member of each generation get consumed by a Bergen royal, and that if a royal born from a stripped gladiola ever came, the chef would have the permission to kill him or her on the spot.'" Art stopped reading.

"Dude, that was intense." Boogie Max shook his head.

"So that would explain why Chef wanted the books!" Licene punched her fist onto the table. "If that tree can poison Bergens, she could use it to kill the Bergen royal family and terrorize everyone in Bergen Town to obey her and make her Queen!"

"There's just something that bugs me." Art showed the next pages, which contained a map of Bergen Town and mainly its castle. "Judging from what we just learned, it seems like our bad guys weren't just after info on the tree. There's also a map..."

"And it shocks you that they would go after a map leading to the tree's location?" Alice rolled her eyes.

"Not that. The map doesn't even have some sort of clue or a red X marking the location or even how to get there from the castle. There's just the list of the ingredients that Prince Aster used, only it's spread all over!"

"Gladiola? Are you OK?" Willy's question caught all the humans' attention and saw the Troll princess just sitting by the edge of the table, her face blanked out of any expressions and her eyes growing tears. The truth had hit her so hard.

Calico hadn't lied when she said that the Night Soul Tree was a tree created by Trolls to poison Bergens.

The tree had been created by one of her ancestors, who happened to be born from a stripped gladiola, like her.

And he had used the Torch of Happiness, a symbol of peace and happiness that her family and people expected to wield to guide them towards happiness.

 _And the one who used it before me acted like a monster,_ Gladiola thought.

"If my ancestor was born from a stripped gladiola like me and ended up becoming a monster..." Gladiola whimpered. "I don't think I'll ever be ready to rule the Trolls."

"Now hold on to your horses." Licene got up from her seat and knelt down in front of Gladiola. "Just because _one_ Troll born from a stripped gladiola made a historical mess doesn't mean _you_ will be one. You, Gladiola Trollkonge, are a better person, and I can tell because you have a lot right here." She put her index finger on Gladiola's small chest, indicating the area of the heart. The Troll Princess smiled and wiped the tears off her eyes.

"You know what?" Boogie Max got up. "I know how to cheer you up." He picked up Gladiola by one hand and led her away from the table towards a nearby door. While his troupe took care of getting rid of the dishes, he led the other into an empty room with white walls, a green-carpeted floor, and a giant classic piano. "I heard you sing back in the library. Maybe this will cheer you up." He gently put Gladiola on the music rack while he sat on the piano bench, cracked his knuckles, and started to play a tune while the others sat down on the carpet and listened to him.

Boogie Max: _I know, oh, oh, oh_

 _Caught up in the middle_

 _I cry, just a little_

 _When I think of letting go._

Gladiola: _Oh, no, oh, oh_

"Yeah, bring it in!" Bogie Max encouraged.

Boogie Max: _Gave up on the riddle_

 _I cry, just a little_

 _When I think of letting go._

Gladiola then sang the rest of the lyrics in a more soothing version than the original rap version.

Gladiola: _I know you wanna get behind the wheel, but only one rider,_

 _Eyes shut still got me swimming like a diver._

 _Oh._

 _Can't let go I got fans back home_

 _My heart does shake like losers and survivors_

Boogie Max: _No way, you didn't get my flowers?_

Gladiola: _I couldn't say better, but my killer was a lone._

Boogie Max: _Your face looks showered, did you cry in the hour?_

Gladiola: _I heard the news and my day went sour._

Both: _Bitter moments got me feeling like a lemon here_

 _Put you in the box just as poisonous as a cigarette_

Boogie Max: _Send my regards_

Gladiola: _Or regardless I get arrested_

Boogie Max: _Ain't worried about the killers_

Gladiola: _Just the young and restless_

Boogie Max: _Get mad 'cause the quarter million on my necklace_

 _DUI never said I was driving reckless_

Both: _You and I know that jealousy is not oppressive_

 _Oh no, I can't stop I was destined._

"Uh, I hate to interrupt." Licene pointed at the clock on the wall, indicating that it was ten minutes until 7pm. "But those with evening classes have less than ten minutes to get back to class, and I still have to apologize to Mr. Checker for running off like that."

"Relax, Licene, you're a good student." Mattie shrugged while Licene picked up Gladiola and helped her sit on the human's shoulder. "I'm sure he'll forgive you. Besides, I'm sure that right now most of the teachers are worried about some maniac who goes around burying college students in library shelves. Uh, I guess that would make a cool horror movie."

"Thanks for your help, Boogie Max." Gladiola gave a small curtsy. "You helped me cheer up."

"Anytime," he said. "You know, me and my crew work at a karaoke bar not too far from campus. Maybe once you're all done with the evening classes, you can join us on the school shuttle taking us there."

"I'm not sure," Licene said. "Besides, I have my drawing supplies..."

"So you just make a run for it back to the dorms, throw the stuff in your room, and grab the shuttle." Alice rolled her eyes.

"But what about Gladiola? I mean, shouldn't we worry about the entire problem with Chef, the Night Soul Tree, and..."

"Licene."

The human looked at the small Troll Princess sitting on her shoulder. Gladiola gave her a small smile and gently patted her on the cheek.

"I understand the issue we're dealing with, but I'm sure we can worry back to it tomorrow," the princess said rather maturely. "And besides, I'm a Troll. I live for fun parties."

Boogie Max chuckled. "Are you sure you're not single, doll?" He joked, causing Gladiola and the others to laugh, except for Willy, who crossed his arms and looked darkly at Boogie Max. Apparently, watching the hip-hop lover slightly flirt with the Troll Princess did not please him very much.

"Alright, I suppose we can spend at least an hour at the karaoke bar." Licene shrugged. "I mean, what's the worst that could happen?"


	10. I Feel Troll-tastic!

Trolls: Gladiola Trollkonge

Chapter 10: I Feel Troll-tastic!

By the time it was 10:30pm, the gang had gone back to the dorms, put aside their supplies, changed into more festive attire, and took the next school shuttle that would take them to the karaoke bar where Boogie Max and his gang worked. They were lucky they were the only passengers onboard, because the moment the driver saw them talking to what looked like an animated Troll doll, he merely shrugged, mumbled that he drank too much coffee, and just ignored them, deciding to focus on the road shielded by the night sky.

Despite having the luxury of sitting in a comfortable seat, Gladiola couldn't help but feel confused. The story about the Night Soul Tree still bugged her. If the last Troll prince born from a stripped gladiola was so bad, then why was everyone back home treating her like she was a miracle? Did that even mean anything anymore? She just couldn't tell anymore.

"I couldn't help but think." Licene burst her bubble. "If the royal Bergen chef thing is a inherited thing...would that mean that the chef who ate your ancestor and became so bitter is Chef's ancestor, which would explain why she's such a misanthropic beast with delusions of happiness?"

"I don't know," Gladiola sighed as she hopped over to the window in order to press her nose on the glass and watch in fascination the cars that drove past them, the street lights that illuminated their way like giant fireflies, the blinking lights they used to let cars pass and other stop... human stuff was just so unique. "I'm not sure what to think anymore. My people treat me like I'm a miracle, but the last guy before me was a maniac. I'm expected to use the Torch of Happiness to guide my people to happiness, but it was last used to create something dangerous."

"Maybe it's one of those stupid time flies gigs," Art said. "You know, people start forgetting that they used to be something in the past. For instance, many Americans forget that they all originated from Europe. It's what happens when people decide to explore the world, discover new lands, enslave the natives, and start getting all nasty on the colonials and it leads to revolution."

"Who'd want to use violence as a way to change the world?" Gladiola asked.

"The French. They turned the monarchy into a democracy of terror," Licene shrugged.

"White oppressors," Mattie said. "Enslaving people, stealing their land, putting them in reservations...You know, skin discrimination."

"The Russian Revolution, which created a new form of ideology," Art said.

"Chef wanting to destroy the current monarchy to rule your home?" Alice suggested.

Gladiola grimaced. "Good point."

The shuttle stopped in front of a building. "You kids have fun," the driver said indifferently. Once they all got out of the shuttle, he took off and left them there. They were in one of the neighborhoods full of small restaurants just outside of the school campus. In fact, the building they stood in front of looked like one of those 20th century red brick warehouses that were intact on the outside due to historical pride but were modernly renovated on the inside. When it came to buildings like this, people always turned the inside into something like a clothing store or an art studio, but this one right now had neon lights glowing through the windows. Musical beats could be heard across the walls. Even the door had neon red painted words KARAOKE BAR right on top of the words 'Fire Department'.

Gladiola's face brightened at the sound of the festivities as she stood on Licene's shoulder. Meanwhile, the latter looked uncomfortably at the sign. "Oh, when Boogie Max said he worked at the karaoke bar, he actually meant the KARAOKE BAR CLUB his cousin owns." She gulped. "Guys, I don't know how to feel about this..."

"If it makes you feel better, aside from Mattie and most likely Gladiola, none of us have ever gone to a night club," Willy said. "So..."

He didn't get to finish his sentence. Out of excitement, Gladiola slid off Licene's shoulder and managed to push the door open. A paradise suddenly opened out to her. Spinning neon lights, a DJ playing at his station or a guest singing lyrics from a song on the small stage, humans of all sizes and colors dancing and partying their heads off on the dance floor or drinking at the bar, decoration lanterns shaped like jellyfish hanging from the ceiling...It was like all of a sudden, Gladiola forgot she was lost in the human world and back home.

"Yo! Glad you could make it, doll!" Boogie Max came to them and picked up Gladiola in his palm. "Welcome to the Karaoke Bar Club, the biggest, the loudest, the craziest party haystack in the neighborhood!" He pointed at the DJ, who turned out to be one of the members of his college hip-hop lovers group. "Check it, my bud DJ is the DJ tonight!"

"Remind me again why his name is DJ?" Art whistled. "Because he's awesome!"

"His full name is Don Juan, but he's not so romantic, so we call him DJ for short."

"This place is amazing!" Gladiola clapped her hands.

"And just to your luck, _you_ 're the next singer!"

Before Gladiola could protest, Boogie Max carried her to the stage while the others preferred to sit at the bar and watch things from a safe distance. Boogie Max jumped on the stage and put Gladiola back on the ground, causing her to be in the spotlight. DJ threw a microphone at Boogie Max, who instantly caught it in his hands and got the other guests' attention.

"Yo, my peeps, listen up!" Boogie Max swaged. "We got a special guest from out of town, so let's give a fantastic time to GLADIOLA TROLLKONGE!"

The small princess could feel her skin burning in awkwardness when she saw all the unfamiliar humans looking at her. Normally, she was used to seeing taller creatures looking at her. When Bergens looked at her, with the exception of Chef, she didn't feel awkwardness at all. When she was around Licene and her other human friends and they looked at her, she got used to it. But being put on stage in front of a species that thought of her kind as plastic toys? Do give her a reason to not feel mortified, I dare you to.

"Hi." She put her hand out meekly.

"Dudes, check it! An automated Troll Doll that talks!" One of the male humans from the audience exclaimed.

"Awesome!" Another said.

"It's SO cute!" One female human leaned over to have a better look. "In which store did you find it, Boogie Max?"

Gladiola scowled. Out of frustration, she grabbed the human's wrist, pulled it towards her, and gave the latter the shock of her life by pinching the human's skin. You'd be shocked, but when a Troll gives a rough pinch contrasting their usual happy states, it meant that they were highly offended.

"That thing pinched me!" The girl exclaimed once Gladiola let her go. "It's real!"

"She happens to be a she!" Licene got up and snapped at the girl. "Just because she _looks_ like a Troll doll doesn't mean she _is_ one! Seriously, how'd you feel if someone told you that you should be staying in the kitchen instead of being here just because you were a girl?"

The pinched girl lowered her head in guilt.

"Now, now, pals," Boogie Max soothed everyone down. "It's the whole point of the Karaoke Bar Club. Here, we don't judge each other for our skin color, our religions, our beliefs, or our clothing. Here, we respect each other as we are. Who we decide to be and how we decide to make a difference is what makes the world turn!"

"How we make a difference is what makes the world turn!" All the guests in the club pounded their chests with their left hands while the right hands went up and made peace signs. Licene and Gladiola made awkward imitations of the gestures.

"So, if we make a difference to turn the world, how does she make hers turn?" One guest pointed at Gladiola.

"That's a good question." Boogie Max turned to Gladiola. "What makes a Troll...Trollish?"

Gladiola smirked. "We prefer calling it Troll-tastic!" She snapped her fingers, causing all the lights to turn off and the spotlight to aim on her. DJ hit his disks.

Gladiola: _I'm gonna explain what makes me._

 _It's the way a Troll feels all day._

 _Sure. You may think it's all silly,_

 _But that's the way to roll all the way!_

 _T, I make you turn your foot to the left._

 _R, I have you roll through the lights._

 _O, we sing an ode when the sun goes west._

 _L, that's when you love the sunlight._

 _L, that's when you lean back,_

 _'Cause we act like a rainbow pack._

A bunch of dancers danced with Gladiola in rhythm while the neon lights flashed and the guests became excited.

Gladiola: _It ain't complicated, it's the way I am._

 _You can be fascinated, that's just how I am._

 _I have my shades of sarcastic,_

 _I'm not bad, I just feel Troll-tastic!_

Dancers: _Feelin' Troll-tastic!_

Gladiola: _It's like I'm full of magic._

Dancers: _When I feelin' Troll-tastic!_

Together: _Not fanatic or problematic,_

 _I'm just feeling Troll-tastic!_

Gladiola: _When you're a Troll, you just know how to roll._

 _Who cares if I'm hyper or a cynic?_

 _A Troll never lets his fears make him crumble,_

 _So we never need to go to the emergency clinic!_

The guests started joining in, shaping out letters with their hands.

Guests: _T!_

Gladiola: _I make you twist and shake your hair!_

Guests: _R!_

Gladiola: _I teach you how to roll on the dance floor!_

Guests: _O!_

Gladiola: _I see you orbit your hands in the air!_

Guests: _L!_

Gladiola: _I love seeing you partying so more!_

Guests: _L!_

Gladiola: _that's when you lean back,_

All together: _'Cause we act like a rainbow pack!_

Gladiola: _It ain't complicated, it's the way I am._

 _You can be fascinated, that's just how I am._

 _I have my shades of sarcastic,_

 _I'm not bad, I just feel Troll-tastic!_

Dancers: _Feelin' Troll-tastic!_

Gladiola: _It's like I'm full of magic._

Guests: _When I feelin' Troll-tastic!_

All together: _Not fanatic or problematic,_

 _I'm just feeling Troll-tastic!_

Boogie Max joined in the singing and dancing, letting Gladiola hop on his shoulder. Licene and the others looked they were having fun joining in the party.

Boogie Max: _Yo, I feel so fantastic,_

 _Ee, yay, ee, yay, ee yay_

 _When I feel so Troll-tastic,_

 _Ee, yay, ee, yay, ee yay_

 _I twist my hips and put my hands in the air_

 _As I shake my wild hair._

Gladiola: _Life ain't so problematic,_

Together: _You just gotta make it excited_

 _Of being so fantastic_

 _Or should I say Troll-tastic?_

Guests: _T!_

Gladiola: _It ain't complicated, it's the way I am._

 _You can be fascinated, that's just how I am._

Guests: _R!_

Boogie Max: _She's got her shades of sarcastic,_

 _She's not bad, she's just feel Troll-tastic!_

Guests: _O!_

Dancers: _Feelin' Troll-tastic!_

Gladiola: _It's like I'm full of magic._

Guests: _L!_

Dancers and Boogie Max: _When I feelin' Troll-tastic!_

Guests: _L!_

All together: _Not fanatic or problematic,_

 _I'm just feeling Troll-tastic!_

Everyone cheered and clapped their hands together as Gladiola curtsied. "TROLLKONGE! TROLLKONGE! TROLLKONGE!" Her friends cheered for her.

"Now _that_ is what I call singing!" Alice said in amazement.

"She was so amazing..." Willy sighed. He caught sight of Art tapping in his phone. "Art, what are you doing?"

"I recorded the entire song," he said. "That way, when she comes home, her voice will always be remembered in our hearts." They all sighed, feeling heartfelt.

"Bring on the karaoke!" Boogie Max shouted.

 _The next day, unknown to Gladiola and her friends_

Chef and Creek looked at the map that was laid out on Darwin's desk, particularly on a red X symbol that was marked in an illustrated area of Bergen Town. "So the passage leading to the Night Soul Tree is near the Southwest Sewage system," Creek said. "How disgusting."

"Disgusting, maybe, but now we have the key to getting our revenge." Chef turned to Dårlig and Feige, who stood stiffly by the door, and gave them a mix of approval and disdain. "You two managed to recover the second copy of the Troll Apothecary Manual with its copy of the map, yet you still didn't get the princess!"

"The Troll Princess was cunning," Dårlig said. "The allies she made were willing to turn themselves into human shields just to protect her. When one of them found out we were after the princess, she swung her backpack at me and stole the ball Mr. Darwin gave us for tracking the Troll."

"We tried following the human to the library and found out they had located the second copy of the Troll Apothecary Manual," Feige continued as she sat on Dårlig's shoulder in a Lotus position. "Dårlig had the humans neutralized by dropping the bookshelves on them while I managed to snatch the manuscript. As for the princess, she had been shielded by the same human who attacked Dårlig."

"We have tried our best and partially failed." Dårlig lowered his head.

Chef and Creek glanced at each other. "Well they _did_ get the map we were missing," Creek pointed out.

Chef pondered for a bit and turned to the pleased Dårlig and Feige. "I suppose you can be forgiven," she said, "but that doesn't make up for the fact that you still haven't brought back the princess. Even if we find the Night Soul Tree, the poison won't be activated without the flames of the Torch of Happiness..."

"I still don't see why one princess born from a stripped gladiola should be the one to wield the Torch of Happiness?" Creek snorted.

"Your spite for the current Troll king clouds your judgment." Mr. Darwin folded the map and put it back in the Troll Apothecary Manual. "Despite the 'incident' with Gladiola Trollkonge's ancestor, she is still unique in her species. Troll royalty born from stripped gladiolas only come to the world when the monarchs love for each other and the love they intend to give to their child are true, genuine, and powerful. Such inherited love and happiness is said to come every millenium and grows the stripped gladiola, which itself grows the Torch of Happiness in its roots. Only the Troll royal born from that plant can pluck it out of its roots and harness the power of the torch."

"And as the legends state, only the flames of the Torch of Happiness can empower the Night Soul Tree's poison to its full potential," Chef said. "That's why we must get that princess at all costs. Once we get back to Bergen Town and neutralize the forces and imprison the royalty, we will use the princess to unleash the torch's powers, activate the poison, and kill the Bergen monarchs while disposing of the Troll monarchs as well. I'll finally have my revenge and rule the Bergens, bringing back Trollstice!" She then grunted at Creek. "And of course, spare you and Feige."

The Troll nodded his head in approval.

"Are you sure that the princess won't just, you know, try to burn us to death if she gets a hold of the torch?" Feige discreetly asked.

"The Troll has a point." Mr. Darwin snapped his fingers and a large crystal ball appeared on his desk. "We will need something to force Gladiola Trollkonge to not harm us and give us the power we need. For that, we need to find her weakness. Something that we know she wouldn't want us to harm..."

"Her parents?" Creek suggested.

"Didn't they both try to strangle you?" Dårlig rolled his eyes. Feige and Chef both snorted while Creek shot a bitter glare at the Bergen.

"The Bergen princess?" Chef asked.

"Not without all the guards," Creek said.

"He's right. It'd have to be something that would lure the princess out of hiding and back to her home," Mr. Darwin tapped on his crystal ball with his fingernails, imitating the sound of a ticking clock.

"What about that human?"

All the adults stared at Dårlig, who gave the suggestion flatly like that. "Excuse me?" Chef snapped.

"I said 'what about that human'?" Dårlig repeated. "The human who hit me, took the tracking ball, and risked to shield the princess despite nearly getting crushed over by a bookshelf? I'd willingly bet a nickel that she's the same human who broke into Mr. Darwin's office."

"Deppie had blue-and-pink hair," Chef said.

"And the color of the princess' hair is?"

Chef was about to say something until she let her minion's words sink into her head and memories flashed. "I can't believe it! So _that's_ why she smelled like a Troll! The Troll Princess was actually acting as her wig to sneak into the office!"

"Again, the princess is cunning," Dårlig said, "but if that human girl was willing to risk her life to protect the Troll, and knowing that the Trolls have a thing about returning kindness, then who's to say that the princess wouldn't risk her own life to protect a friend? After all, she's supposed to be her parents' daughter."

Mr. Darwin chuckled in satisfaction. "An excellent theory." He waved his hand over his crystal ball and had an image of the human girl appear. "We'll use the human girl who's hosting her as bait to lure her back to us. Go to the kitchen and tell my saucier to prepare a bottle of sleep tonic. In an hour, you're going back to AURA. Drug her to sleep and bring her to us."

"Yes," Dårlig bowed while Feige curtsied on his shoulder.

"And don't fail us this time!" Chef ordered.

"Understood." Dårlig closed the door behind him once he got outside the office. He and Feige exchanged smirks as they walked down the hallway and towards the kitchen.

"We totally fooled them, didn't we?" Feige quietly giggled.

Dårlig nodded and pulled something out of his uniform's collar. It looked like the tip of rolled up pages, which looked like they had been torn out of their original book.

"Like stealing candy from grown-up babies." Dårlig ducked the pages back in his collar. He then gently curled his finger affectionately in Feige's hair. "We'll get what we want, Feige, but this time we can't pretend to screw up another mission. We're going hunting for the human."


	11. Painting With Peril

Trolls: Gladiola Trollkonge

Chapter 11: Painting With Peril

Licene knocked on the door. It opened, revealing Willy's head. "You're sure nobody else other than Art will realize her presence here?" She asked him. Gladiola sat stiffly on her shoulder.

"Yeah. Patrick's off on this field trip for his filmmaking class and Art's at the library right now," Willy said. "Gladiola should be safe with me."

"OK." Licene picked up Gladiola and held her in her palms. "I'm not crazy about this either, but I can't bring you with me to my interview. Besides, Chef's goons would have to be idiotic to try to attack the residence hall." Licene had an appointment for a part-time job interview taking place at least five streets away from the AURA. Gladiola had to grimly accept the fact that with all the craziness currently going on for her human friend, the last thing that could happen to Licene would be to fail the interview and be labeled crazy for talking to a Troll doll.

Licene passed the princess onto Willy's hands. It was a bit of an awkward situation for them, since Willy's hands were currently covered in paint from currently working on a project. Gladiola actually had to stand on her tiptoes.

"You got my number, you bought the berries, and you swore that under no reason you'd leave your apartment unless it's to go to the food court or if danger comes," Licene told Willy sternly. "If Gladiola gets killed or captured, I'll make your life miserable for eternity! Got it?"

"Yes, chief." Willy nodded.

"I should hopefully be back about an hour after lunch." To that, Licene left. Willy closed the door and placed Gladiola on the dining table, right next to a bowl of fresh strawberry and blueberry salad. The Troll's eyes beamed eagerly at the sight of the salad. Faster than one's own blink, she made a run for the closest strawberry, making Willy chuckle.

"Make yourself comfy, it'll be a while until I finish my painting project," Willy said. He then went to a canvas that was laying on the floor covered by masses of paint-stained plastic. Gladiola stopped feasting on the berry salad to have a look at Willy in work. Almost like the sole Troll painter Harper that she knew back home, Willy didn't use paintbrushes. He either used his fingers or Chinese chopsticks to dip in the paint and spread it in the canvas, creating amazingly thin strokes or volumed shapes. For a moment, she was captivated by how the curved strokes he painted looked so familiar.

"The strokes look like Troll hair." She smiled.

Willy returned that smile with a nod. "After seeing yours move around in whichever way you wanted, it made me think a lot about the strokes of the painter Van Gogh, only...yours are more colorful." His comment made her blush. Gladiola went back to observing his work.

She lost her blush and frowned. Willy was painting someone that looked like a ebony brown haired clone of him dressed in some sort of colorful, candy-themed waistcoat and outfit. The clone was sitting on a field of diverse candy, which appealed very much to the princess' tastes, only for the clone ruining it by kneeling on crushed peppermints while attempting to rip his hair off and chocolate colored tears draining the black mascara out of his eyes. It poured down his body and stained the candy wonderland like a river of bad blood. For a moment, Gladiola felt like it was purely depressing, but at the same time, it reminded her of the stories her father told her whenever she was a child. ' _Life isn't all cupcakes and rainbows, Gladiola. Remember._ ' It didn't help that he used it as a moral for whenever he recounted how he had to the deal with his idealist wife to the point that she and their entire race turned grey. Gladiola would have woken up screaming about the nightmares she had of losing her colors and her parents would argue for the rest of the day. So in a way, Willy's painting reminded her that life wasn't all cupcakes and rainbows just by looking at the blood staining the candy.

Willy saw her expression. "My teacher told us to paint the who we hate about ourselves," he said.

Gladiola frowned as she kept looking at the 'Willy clone'. "The 'who you hate about yourself'? What is that supposed to mean?"

"I know, it's weird." Willy decided to take a break and went to wash his hands in the kitchen sink. "My teacher is also a philosophy teacher for seniors, so she sometimes mixes her humanistic studies classes with her studio classes. Last week, she read us this paragraph about this philosopher that nobody remembers but that she's a big fan of. Basically, the guy's main idea about life is that our lives are only part of one layer among other living layers that form existence itself. That each layer is in other words existing forms that only exist presently in our locked minds but exist in theirs."

"That makes no sense," Gladiola said.

"It doesn't at first until the teacher translated as 'he believed that aside from our own existence, other realities exist and who we aren't live there'. Just like how in your world, your people are species who bring happiness to all, but in our world, you're a children's toy."

"That makes more sense." She looked back at the painting. "So, this is what your 'alternate personality' is?" She air-quoted the before last two words. "What's with the candy?"

"I hate candy. In another existing universe, my other self would love candy, unlike me."

"Why do you hate candy so badly?"

"Back when I was a kid in Texas, the teachers in school read us a book called _Charlie and the Chocolate Factory._ I loved it until other students started picking at me and making fun of my name because it sounded like one of the characters' name in the book, Willy Wonka."

"Was he a bad person?" Gladiola jumped on the couch and made sure that no signs of paint were on her before she decided to lay down on one of the pillows.

"No, he was one of the _good guys_." Willy opened the fridge and pulled out a can of root beer and a berry smoothie bottle with a straw to go with it. He sat down and adjusted the straw in the bottle for Gladiola to drink as they talked. "He was very eccentric if not crazy and a master chocolatier who created the story's chocolate factory that he later gives away to the book's protagonist. Kids picked on me, teasing me about how I was a 'Texas Wonka' and stealing my lunchbox to see if I had any homemade sweets. One time during a Career Day lesson when I was eleven, one of my classmates' older brothers joined the fun and said: 'Willy here needs no Career Day! He's got his job already!' And others said: 'Yeah! He'll make chocolate for a living!'" Willy sighed. "I was never able to go to a candy store or eat any sweets. Whenever I went to someone's birthday party, my mom would pick me up ten minutes before the birthday cake came. As for my own birthday, I stuck with oatmeal with sprinkled raspberries. Helped my parents save money."

Sympathy took over Gladiola. Now she understood the depressing painted candy. She pictured a miniature Willy being bullied into a chase by giant humans taunting him with a melting birthday cake and wrapped candy armed like spiked maces. The picture then led the mini Willy into what seemed to be the mixture of more than a decade's worth of birthday parties and pastries that Gladiola was spoiled with throughout her life. She always found the baking contest and giant cakes the Trolls and Bergens made her and Calico for their royal special days to be a wonderful treat but now...

Willy snapped his fingers in front of Gladiola, nearly making her choke on the straw. "You OK?" He asked worriedly. "You look like your life flashed behind your eyes."

"It did..." Gladiola muttered. "My spoiled life tried to murder you with cake."

The young human blinked his eyes in awkwardness. "That's probably the weirdest thing I ever heard after 'I have the stretch marks that say otherwise'."

They said nothing for a few minutes until Willy decided to go back to the painting. He stuck a chopstick in a patch of dark oak brown paint and began tracing dark shades in his painting clone. "My other me not only loves candy, but he's very cynical and bitter. He..." Willy stopped talking. "I said nothing."

"He gets his cynicism from his dad?" Gladiola guessed. She figured that Willy wanted to avoid recalling the argument they had back at the Hourglass building on the first day, where she had called him off for shattering his father's hopes of making Willy the next owner of the livestock ranch. "By the way, I'm sorry I judged you for the...thing."

"I don't blame you given our opposing statuses." He wiped the chopstick to dispose of the brown paint once he was done shading the hair.

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?" Gladiola frowned.

"Glady, you're a princess." Willy stopped painting to look at her as he spoke. "You're born and raised with responsibilities that only country leaders face. You have access to so many resources, luxuries, and advantages that most commoners have to work hard for to receive it themselves. You want to be what your people want to be and that's fine with you because you genuinely want to be their fair leader. I'm just one commoner out of a million human commoners with parents who already risk a large sum of money to send me to a private school like AURA several states away from them. My dad was the main source of our family's payments since my mother doesn't make much as a teacher, and he grew up as a practical human, believing that only real labor was a living. He was probably a jerk, but...he sacrificed a quarter of his earnings to get me a painting kit...And...Art supplies aren't exactly..."

He stopped talking. He didn't notice Gladiola leaving the couch, but he did feel her spreading her arms over his cheeks as if to hug him. Warmth went through his skin from that hug.

"Feel better?" Gladiola asked quietly. She gently pulled back and sat on his shoulder.

"Thanks." Willy rubbed his fingers together. "Hey, Gladiola. Out of curiosity... How different would things have been if I were a Troll or a Bergen? Would our friendship remain as it is or...would we be more?"

Gladiola felt her ears burning. _If I were a Troll or a Bergen. Would we be more?_ Was he...indirectly telling her that he _liked_ her past the friend zone? Gladiola knew that their current state would make any possible relationship on that level impossible. They were from complete different species with different forms of reproduction and the fact that they came from two separate worlds, with his turning any Troll from hers into a plastic toy gradually, did not help. So yeah, cross off any potential star-crossed romance.

She thought of his previous question. "I guess if you were a Bergen, we'd be friends. Very close, but just friends," she told him. "I mean, Trolls and Bergens are now closer than ever, but because of our..."

"Different mating rituals, I remember." Willy lowered his head in slight disappointment. "And if I were a Troll."

Gladiola slightly smiled in amusement. "I'd say you'd have as much chance as any other male Troll among my people," she chuckled. "I bet the local Troll painter Harper could have hired you as one of her assistants."

"Would I have been too low for you?" Willy used his finger to trace a golden 'W' with curled tips at the end of his painted clone's waistcoat.

"Don't be ridiculous, Trolls don't believe in class difference! My own mother wears simple dresses and my father was a commoner survivalist until he and my mother dated and married." Gladiola said. "As long as the happiness and love are genuine in the couple, a Troll royal can marry anyone among their subjects."

"I bet you have a lot of guys back home trying to woo you." Willy assumed.

"True, but I'm not in a hurry to get married. I know that eventually I'll have to bring blood heirs to take the throne after me when they turn eighteen or twenty, but I'm still trying to juggle with dealing with my own royal responsibilities. How could I handle my own children if I don't know yet how to handle my own people once I become queen?"

"You'll learn someday," Willy said encouragingly as he put the finishing touches to his painting. "Even humans don't immediately jump into parenting. They first need to make sure that they find their place in the world and learn how to handle things own their own before adding in other people into their lives and make a family. And sometimes, some find other ways of happiness and many are just grateful for what they have than what they want."

Gladiola smirked. "You know, Willy, you may not be a Troll, but you definetly _talk_ like one."

"Thanks." Willy smiled.

 _Meanwhile_

"Thank you again for the interview." Licene shook her hand with the one of the manager of the art shop she had gone to for the interview. "I do hope to make it through."

"Honestly, you seem to be a fitting candidate," the manager said. "After I make some calls to confirm your credibility, you should be able to start next week. With midterm exam coming up, our shop always gets packed with students seeking more materials, we could use an extra hand here."

Licene grinned. She was sure to have nailed this interview. By next week, she'd be able to work as one of the part-time student employees of the most popular art store in the neighborhood. This was definetly worth celebrating with the others when she got back. _Maybe I should stop by the local bakery_ , she thought. _They sell some strawberry custard pies that I bet Gladiola would love._

SWING!

Licene was lucky that the knife aimed for the wall and not her skull, but just seeing the flashing blade appear right before her and right at her nose's tip was enough to give her a freak attack. She rubbed her nose, making sure that she was not injured or something. Her head turned clockwise and saw a figure standing at least fifteen feet away from her at the local parking lot.

Normally, seeing figures standing in places wasn't such a problem for Licene. Heck, she could assume it was just one of those street freaks that always hung around in places that just ended up being labeled as 'the unsafe places for college students because of the freak population'. She could have just walked away easily and ignore the figure.

But how could she ignore _that_ figure when it was Dårlig with his female Troll associate sitting on his shoulder. But right now, Licene was more worried about all the knives he had strapped over his grey cooking uniform. From where she was standing, she could count twenty-four knives hanging on him, and if she counted the knife she just got near the nose, that made twenty-five.

She tried to do the math in her head. Her residence hall was only five streets away, and the campus safety would never allow Dårlig inside, especially after throwing a knife at a student. She only had her purse with her, so she wouldn't be weighed down by a backpack if she ran. The only problem was the one with the knives. She could picture him throwing them all at her and not bothering to pick them up or actually recollecting them. She hoped for the second one, it could slow him down.

Dårlig took some steps ahead. His hand cautiously slipped out one knife and made its aim. _If I time it right,_ Licene mentally muttered.

A Mercedes drove by and inadvertently got hit on the passenger door. Licene didn't hesitate and made a run for it. The driver got out and complained to Dårlig, who merely ran to pluck off his thrown weapons and threw them right at Licene. She managed to dodge them before they hit her ankles.

 _Maybe if I run in zigzags up the street, I can mess with his target shot._ She got off the sidewalk and started running in zigzags in between parked cars. She was barely lucky to dodge a passing motorcycle, with the driver obviously shouting at her to watch it.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

"Gah!" Six knives flew past her, aligning into a sharp barricade that impaled the street, forcing her to stop in her tracks. Licene looked behind her, but all she could see were a bunch of nearby pedestrian looking in confusion at the sight. But where was the knife-thrower?

"Mommy, look!" She heard and saw a little boy pointing upward. "A purple ogre ninja!"

The kid's words 'purple' and 'ogre' hit Licene, prompting her to look up and see Dårlig moving from tree to tree with his Troll associate using her hair to swing them around like a colorful vine.

"I'm not staying here!" Licene shouted and made a run for the nearest sidewalk. When she hit the mark that reminded her she only had four more streets to go before reaching campus, she briefly turned her head and saw the Troll using her hair to grab the knives and hand the lot back to Dårlig. The duo then did the most insane thing ever: the female Troll swung her hair in an arc form that Dårlig held in his hands. Licene was confused for a moment until she saw him placing the knives he had collected and... used her hair as a bow and, as if they were arrows, shot the knives at Licene. She narrowly dodged them, but the oak tree near her didn't.

 _Why on earth are they trying to kill me_? Licene mentally screamed as she ran up and down, left and right, and nearly getting killed by flying knives.

 _Maybe he thinks I have Gladiola on me_? That part almost made sense until she remembered that Chef wanted Gladiola alive. If she sent Dårlig and his ally to hunt down the princess and bring her back, he surely wouldn't use knives to catch a Troll.

Out of nowhere, a knife caught Licene's collar, pinning her to a nearby brick wall. Two more knives pinned her by the sleeves when she tried reaching out to get rid of the knife on her collar.

"W...What do you want from me?" Licene stammered as Dårlig walked towards her, leaving her in a quite trapped state.

"Bait," he simply said. The Troll female spit something out of a tube. At the last minute, Licene realized as she fell unconscious that it was a dart spiked with a sleeping drug.

 _Hours later, back at the AURA campus_

The boys had ordered a bunch of pizza and strawberry flavored ice cream for dinner since Licene still hadn't come back from her interview. While Willy came back to his apartment with the received deliveries, Gladiola was watching something that Art and Boogie Max's gang called 'Youtube'.

"Check it out," Boogie Max said. "All footage of you singing back at the party got at least five hundred thousand views and four thousand and nine hundred ninety-nine likes!"

"Girl, the 'I Feel Troll-tastic' number was such a hit!" One of his female hip-hop friends clapped her hands. "Everyone on the Internet is calling you the 'Princess of Troll'."

"Wow." Gladiola was amazed. With these strange webs that humans made, the Troll Princess had become a singing sensation all over the human world.

She looked up at the small clock on the microwave in the kitchen, the time indicating 12:30. "Licene's running late," she said.

"She said she'd be back around an hour after lunch," Willy said as he opened the box full of hot, steaming cheese pizza. "I bet she's about done with her interview."

"I don't know, I kinda agree with Gladiola here." Art folded his laptop. "She has an afternoon class later at four. Knowing her, she'd probably avoid anything just to make sure she gets to class on time."

"You don't think...something bad happened to her?" Gladiola bit her nearly plastic-felt lips.

"I'll try calling her." Willy pulled out his cell phone and quickly dialed Licene's number. The others watched silently as Willy waited for a minute or so before he solemnly turned off his phone. "She's on voicemail."

A banging noise hit the front door. Boogie Max quickly hid Gladiola in his jacket's pocket while Willy went to open the door. Alice and Mattie dropped on the floor, panting hysterically.

"WE GOT KNIFED!" Mattie shouted against her own personality. Willy quickly closed the door while Gladiola got out of her hiding spot.

"What happened?" She asked.

"Mattie and I were just leaving the cafeteria when Dårlig threw a knife at us!" Alice pulled something out of her backpack. It looked like a white envelope and a brown pouch, each with a loose string dangling. "These were hung on the knife that he threw. Apparently, it's for you." She gave the envelope to Gladiola. Sure enough, in capital letters, it had her name on it. Unsure at first if whether or not this was a trick, Gladiola risked everything and pulled a scrapbooking pair of scissors to cut the envelope open.

"Yo, who else saw this?" Boogie Max asked the girls.

"No one!" Mattie said. "By the time anyone came in the street, he was gone and we were madly running for our lives!"

"There's worse. Check out what's in the pouch."

Everyone watched as Alice's shaking hand pulled something out of the pouch. Gladiola dropped her scissors in horror. She instantly recognized the thing that made annoying noises just to wake Licene up every morning.

"L...Licene's phone..." she choked. She looked down at the envelope and, imitating Alice's shaking, pulled out the small ripped piece of paper that was just her size. Her eyes widened in further horror as she read the letter. "'Life ain't cupcakes and rainbows, princess. Meet Chef, Creek, and Mr. Darwin at Edgar Allen Poe's grave, tonight, at midnight, and alone. Fail any of the requirements and your human friend has it coming.'" Brown hair strands were taped to the note. "Licene's been captured," she said. "I should have never let her go on her own."

"It's clearly a trap," Willy said. "They're using Licene as bait to lure you in. Remember the tale? They want you because of the Night Soul Tree."

"I give 'em some credit," Boogie Max said. "The freaks must know that we wouldn't groove all the way to the cemetery in the dark. Baltimore ain't a safe spot for college students at night."

"I have to go." Gladiola stood up. "Licene protected me ever since she found me. It wouldn't be fair if I didn't help her in return..."

"Gladiola, you can't be serious!" Willy protested.

"I'm the Crown Princess of the Trolls!" She shouted at him. "I have to do what's right!"

"Hold on!" Alice made a time-out sign. "Let's not forget that the cemetery also holds the portal to Gladiola's world. This may be an opportunity to sneak our way into preventing the bad guys from using the Night Soul Tree."

"That's right." Gladiola realized. "We could try to leave for the cemetery and arrive there at least a couple hours before the villains do. With the time we have, we try to locate the portal, and when the bad guys come, I'll present myself and they'll take me with them. I just hope they free Licene."

"They may or may not, depending if they want to use her to keep you in line," Alice said. "But at one point, they'll have to take you back with them to your home and we'll follow you. While they are busy with their evil business, we'll see if we can use our digital copy of the map to locate the Night Soul Tree and destroy it before Chef, Creek, and Mr. Darwin reach do."

"But it's in riddles." Art pointed out.

"Then one of us will have to go back to the Shop of Mystics and ask for a clue from the weird ladies."

"I got no classes today, I can hit their crib." Boogie Max volunteered.

"I have a cousin who works at a pawnshop near the old man's grave," one of his hip-hop followers said. "I could call him and ask him to check out the place once in a while. See if there's anything fishy."

"Sounds like a plan." Gladiola nodded. "I don't care what it takes, but I'm saving Licene and taking those villains down."


	12. Graveyard Rendezvous

Trolls: Gladiola Trollkonge

Chapter 12: Graveyard Rendezvous

Gladiola tried her hardest to avoid letting anxiety take the best of her as the hands on Willy's wristwatch indicated five minutes 10pm. The cousin of Boogie Max's friend had offered to pick them up in his car to drive them to the cemetery.

"We're with you, Gladiola," Mattie reassured her. She shook a duffel bag that sounded like it was full of equipment. "Just in case, we planned on bringing supplies with us."

"Let me guess. Art supplies?" Gladiola asked drily.

"You never know." The human quickly looked through the bag. "I never realized how many tools you used to make ropes, Alice."

"That's my old escape tool kit back when I was in juvie." Alice shrugged. The other humans looked blankly at her.

"You were in a juvenile hall? No wonder you're so good at making ropes!" Art exclaimed.

"I told you, I believe in the apocalypse!" She snapped.

"Guys, shut up! I think I see them coming...What the hell?" Willy spoke up when they saw a black vehicle pull over in front of them. The front passenger window pulled down and Boogie Max's face popped out. "Hop in, dudes!"

"Your friend failed to mention that her cousin drives a hearse," Willy said as he and the others made their way to the back door.

"What's a hearse?" Gladiola asked Willy as they stepped in the back. She froze when she saw an empty coffin lying on floor and covered her mouth to avoid vomiting. "Never mind."

"Boogie Max, where's the rest of your gang?" Art asked as they sat down and the cousin hit the fuel.

"Sorry guys, but they realized at the last minute that they signed up for a workshop at the local conservatory. Looks like it's just the six of us." Boogie Max sighed before turning to look at the cousin. "So, Martha said you work at the pawnshop next to the cemetery."

"I do, man, but I also do additional work by driving for funerals," the man said.

"That explains the coffin," Gladiola grumbled.

"Sorry. I had to do this pickup for an upcoming dead lawyer's funeral. They forgot to get it themselves." He shrugged. "I did some check up on the freaks like Martha told me. Based on the info, I've actually seen them multiple times this week. Everytime they came, I always saw a bunch of weird flashing coming from the graveyard. Last Sunday, I thought it was just a bunch of kids loitering the place in the middle of the day, but then I saw one of the purple freaks talking to a living Troll doll on his shoulder and the old hag with him kept telling them to shut up."

"Sounds like Dårlig and Chef," Gladiola grumbled. "Must have been on the day they captured me."

"Really?" The cousin quickly looked at the rear window, which reflected the pink Troll. She gave him a quick 'Wasn't Me' look and he shrugged. "The second time I saw it, it was right about in the afternoon before the pawnshop was closing. The Dårlig dude came in and said he needed ink remover."

"Ink remover?" Art asked. "You mean like those white outs they sell at the pharmacy if you want to get rid of a mistake you wrote?"

"Nah, not the cheap one. He asked for one that could erase ancient writing on parchment. Those things don't sell cheap, heck they're as expensive as this hearse. I warned him that it's pretty dangerous and expensive stuff, and once it touches it, whatever it wrote is gone forever. I put the bottle on the paying counter and quickly went to the back to fetch a box for it, but the moment I came back, he was gone with the bottle. I caught him heading for the cemetery, but the moment I went there, he was nowhere to be found."

"What could Chef possibly want with ink remover?" Gladiola frowned as the cousin made a turn. "Make it blank so that by the time they reach the Night Soul Tree, they destroy the Troll Apothecary Manual's knowledge?"

"Beats me, Gladiola." Willy shared her concern. "The Bergens couldn't even use fire to destroy the book and the tree themselves. What could she expect that human ink remover would do?"

Gladiola didn't know what to think. First, Chef and her allies go after an indestructible book that holds the key to a Troll-fabricated poison, and now they go shopping for ink remover. Even putting the pieces together in a scrapbook made no sense to her. "Did you see anything else?" Gladiola asked the driver.

"Well after my cousin told me the story of talking Troll doll princess and how one of her college friends got kidnapped by a freaky purple Shrek, I decided to go do some info digging at the cemetery. I bribed the guy who works in the security room. They got cameras placed all over, so after some serious research, he managed to find me a video that only noticed recently. Around 7pm, while everyone was busy closing the place, the freaks were dragging in this gagged girl towards the iconic Edgar Allen Poe grave. You know, the one with the raven on it. The only actual human in the group touched the bird and the flashing I saw before came, taking the Dårlig dude, his Troll doll, and the girl. The adults who were with them went to go grab dinner at a nearby restaurant."

 _So they already got Licene through the portal,_ Gladiola thought.

After a couple more minutes of driving, the cousin pulled over. "We're here."

"Hang on. I'll check first." Boogie Max quickly got up. Gladiola crawled over Willy's head in order to have a view of the window. She nearly curled into a ball when she saw the austere gothic church surrounded by a black painted metal fence and occupied by gray tombstones and spidery trees. The starless sky above them and the lights of traffic and the city did not change the dominating appearance of the deadly place.

Boogie Max feigned walking around the fence's corner, as if he were a mere passerby just chilling by. After a minute or so, he came back and spoke to the cousin. "They aren't in the cemetery. Thanks for the ride."

The cousin nodded. "Be careful." He turned his head towards Gladiola. "Good luck saving your people."

"I will." Gladiola thanked him.

They all got off the hearse and watched it drive off. Gladiola was the first to jump off Willy's shoulder and make her way to the fence's gate. When she saw it was locked, she swung herself up with her hair and used her scrapbooking scissors to pick on the lock. A clicking sound came and the gates opened.

Alice whistled. "You know how to break into places better than I know how to escape!"

"Eh. My dad taught me a lot about picking on locks in case I get stuck in a cage."

They poured their way into the graveyard. Cold grey stones overwhelmed by drying grass, leafless trees with bark darker than coal, aging stones that were spread unevenly everywhere, and ravens screaming their piercing, ominous shrieks... This place was worse than when Gladiola had to attend the rare funerals back in Bergen Town.

Nobody was a fan of funerals, especially the Trolls. When you talked about death, it sent them back to the traumatic years of countless deaths during the Trollstice Era. They wanted to forget about the days they nearly faced a Bergen's stomach until Calico had reached her thirteenth birthday. Out of the two princesses, she felt the most nostalgic about what happened, so one of her new teenager royal declarations was to turn the anniversary day of Trollstice into a Trollstice Memorial Day. The Bergens' ancestors always kept a census of the Trolls they held captive before the dreaded holiday, so what Calico had them do was write down the names of all the eaten Trolls, along with their age, death date, and the Bergen who ate them, onto a wooden wall she built by the castle. Every year, Gladiola had to watch all the Bergens lighting candles for each Troll they had killed (if they had eaten any thirty-eight years ago) and give tribute to the Troll families they had pained. Even though it was a good way for Calico's species to express its apologetic guilt to the ones they had wronged, it hurt Gladiola the most when the human graveyard reminded her of two things.

One, everytime the Bergens brought apologetic tribute to Gladiola's family, it was always King Gristle Junior apologizing to Queen Poppy for his ancestors eating hers, which reminded Gladiola of how her ancestor Prince Aster was responsible for causing one royal to die per generation because of his actions.

Second, her father never got a tribute. Great-Granny Rosiepuff, Gladiola's paternal grandparents and all the other uncles, aunts, and cousins she never knew on Branch's side, all died at the teeth of the same Bergen. And it's only now that Gladiola remembered that the main reason her father never got tribute on Trollstice Memorial was because they were all eaten by the same Bergen.

"You OK, Gladiola?" Willy gently poked her, making her come back to reality and stopping herself from crash landing onto a tombstone.

"Sorry," she sighed. "This place is traumatic. It caused me to realize that... Chef ate everyone in my dad's family."

Willy gasped. "I'm so sorry."

Gladiola started to find herself crying. He sympathetically carried her in his hands.

"Guys, over here!" Art called them out and they ran to join him by a peculiarly light tomb. "There it is. The Edgar Allen Poe grave with the raven on it!"

Gladiola wiped her tails and blinked to have a better look of the carved raven and the words above it. "'Quoth the raven. Nevermore.' What does that mean?"

"It's a quote from the guy's poem 'The Raven' where the raven says 'nevermore'. It means 'never again'," Alice explained. "Any idea on how to activate the portal?"

"Martha's cousin said that Mr. Darwin touched the raven." Boogie Max poked his finger all over the stoned bird. After a couple minutes of waiting, nothing happened. "Nothing."

"I know!" Art snapped his fingers and looked at Gladiola. "Your singing attracted the Troll Apothecary Manual to you. Maybe you can use your singing to locate the portal's trigger."

Gladiola nodded. Willy lowered himself so that she could land safely on the tomb. She took a deep, calm breath, reminding herself that her people and Licene needed her, and sang her melodic voice at the top of her lungs. She was almost out of breath when the raven's beak finally decided to glow with rainbow colors. The rainbow lights increased, blinding them for seconds before it disappeared. The stone on the ground disappeared and got replaced by a staircase going down below the layers of soil. A green light seemed to be waiting for whoever decided to walk down those stairs. Some strange scent came coiling its way out and into their noses.

"Home..." Gladiola choked. "OK, you can close."

A rumbling noise came from the staircase, as if it were frustrated that nobody stepped inside, and shut itself like a mouth closing. Once the grass was patched up, the stone reappeared back in place.

"I guess the portal automatically closes if nobody steps in after opening it," Mattie said. "Now what?"

"We have to wait, I'm afraid." Gladiola sat by the tombstone. How convenient. She was waiting with her friends for the villains to show up for a midnight rendezvous in a human graveyard at midnight. Try comparing that to one of those midnight parties Gladiola had with Chandler and Gossamer, unlike the latter party, Gladiola was not bound to fall asleep.

"I'll climb up that tree and flash my phone with Morse in case I spot the bad guys." Alice headed for the tree nearest to the fence and climbed it so easily before finally finding a good area to stay still. With her dark clothing, she easily blended in the environment.

"By the way, I went to these those creepy hags you told me about." Boogie Max sat down.

"And?" Willy asked.

"I told them everything you guys told me and about the stuff we found on the tree." Boogie Max looked at Gladiola. "FYI, they confirmed that the Bergen Chef who ate your ancestor, the dude who made the Night Soul Tree, is the ancestor of our beloved Chef."

"Great," the princess grumbled. _Rivals since history_ , she thought bitterly.

"Luckily, they didn't talk rubbish about how to find the tree..."

"They told you where it is?" Her hair almost spiked out of her head.

"They said _how_ to find it, not _where_ to find." While she groaned, he continued. "Since the tree isn't supposed to be found by anyone else except the Bergen Chef, the entrance to its hideout is camouflaged and fools everyone. But the two ladies said that if we join the ingredients together to the one area they have in common, that's where we'll find the entrance to the Night Soul Tree."

"And how is that helping us?" Mattie grumbled.

Gladiola ran the recipe through her head. _Twelve female navel Troll gemstones, a stolen crying Bergen infant tear, a Troll hair, a dead branch from the Troll Tree, and the flames of the Torch of Happiness..._

"I think it means that wherever he got the ingredients from, where they cross is where the hideout meets." Gladiola found a nearby patch of dirt and started tracing a triangle with her fingers. "Suppose the ingredients were located in areas of Bergen Town and form a geometrical shape together, and when you try to trace a line from one point to its opposite side, all the lines meet in one area!"

"Gladiola, you're a genius!" Willy said.

"Actually, I can't believe I'm saying this, but my ancestor might be the genius one. My guess is that he must have assumed that if his plans failed, the Bergens would have to hide the tree since they couldn't destroy it. In case someone after him decided to go after the tree, they'd use his clues to find it!"

"That ain't dumb." Art pulled out the images of the 'map'. "And in case undesirable hands were after the tree, he'd just confuse them rather than directly indicate where the booty was." He did some finger slipping on his phone. "The ingredients are spread all over Bergen Town, but if I use my pen tool to connect them to each other and then try crossing them...Bingo!" He showed the screen to them. A strange red pentagon shape, each point meeting the name of the ingredient, now marked the photo he had of the map. And the common center of the crossed lines was...  
"It's in the castle..." Gladiola suddenly gasped. "They hit that window on the palace's east side! I know it, it's the only window they have in the royal kitchens!"

Mattie slapped herself on the forehead. "You must be joking!"

"Gladiola, don't get me wrong, but aren't the royal kitchens basically Chef's territory?" Willy asked.

"Not exactly anymore, but if Chef was so desperate of finding the Troll Apothecary Manual for its map, it can only mean that even she herself doesn't know where it is!" She rubbed her temples. "OK. If I were a Bergen Chef and I wanted to hide the entrance of a poisonous tree in my kitchen, where would I hide it?"

"I'd do in the movies." Boogie Max shrugged. "There's some hidden trigger behind a portrait and when you pull it, the floor pops open!"

"The trigger idea sounds good, but not the floor. I should know, Calico and I watched them change the old tiles for cleaner ones..." Gladiola shook her head. "Maybe..."

A small flashing life came from the tree where Alice was perched on. At first, Gladiola did not understand what Alice had said in Morse through her phone, but what followed the human jumping off the tree made it evident. The voice of a grumpy Chef heading towards the area was it.

"Spread out!" Gladiola hissed at them. The humans nodded and hid behind a couple graves or in some bushes. When she got up and looked around, she could tell that they were well hidden since she couldn't see them herself. The princess took a deep breath and straightened her dress as she got on her feet to prepare for the bad guys. _Play it good,_ she told herself.

She finally saw them come: Mr. Darwin, Creek, and Chef. The human sorcerer was holding his right hand up to form an illuminating orb of light, the treacherous Troll was sitting on Chef's shoulder, and the latter, the evil Bergen, was holding the same cage they had used to hold her when they kidnapped her.

"You're early," Mr. Darwin commented.

"Where's Licene?" Gladiola ignored him and demanded for the information she already knew to keep up her charade.

"You can say that she's in a place where her karma will get to her if you don't do as we say," Creek chuckled. "I could say the same about your parents."

Her body froze. She did not see that coming. "If you do anything to my parents..." She clenched her fists.

Chef gave a cruel grin. She bent down and put the cage on the ground while she had a staring contest with the princess. "They're fine, for the time being. To tell you the truth, the little time you had with your human friend has made it so much easier for us."

"You make no sense."

"Allow me to explain, little one." Mr. Darwin's orb of light darkened as he explained. "You see, through my knowledge of magic, I was able to provide these two fiends with a plan for revenge at the cost of a price that doesn't concern you. With their new poisonous power, they will destroy the monarchs who have ruined them and dominate Bergen Town. But they need you to activate the poison."

"Sorry. I know nothing about poisons." Gladiola shrugged.

"Forgive me for not being clear. You see, this certain poison they have doesn't work unless it has been enlightened by the fire from the Torch of Happiness. You know, your destined heirloom."

 _Shit_ , Gladiola thought. So that was why they wanted her! Because she was born from a stripped gladiola flower, she was the only royal Troll who could wield it when the time was right, and it was the same weapon her ancestor had used to create the Night Soul Tree. The villains wanted to kidnap her in order to get to it.

"We were going to use your parents to blackmail you into doing as we say and blackmail _them_ into surrendering if they thought we'd spare you," Chef said, "but your friendship with the human made it easier. You and your family would never dare to get an innocent, uninvolved sweetheart harmed. The moment I had Dårlig and Feige bring her to Bergen Town, they managed to get everyone subdued by threatening an innocent life. So let's keep it that way. In the cage, now."

Gladiola feigned a grumble of surrender and stepped into the cage. The bars clanged viciously as Chef closed the door and put a lock on it, and to Gladiola's dismay, it was a numbered lock just like the ones humans used to lock up places and make it harder for others to break out. Once in AURA, Gladiola had seen one of the janitors use a similar lock to keep his closet safe from anyone who could steal his supplies. Licene even explained to her that because the locks' gears couldn't be as easily picked as the ones that need a key and relied on a unique numeral combination, the chances of stealing whatever it was holding was all but possible. For the first time, Gladiola wished the humans didn't make such curious trinkets.

"Shall we open the portal?" Creek offered Darwin as Chef lifted the caged Gladiola. The sorcerer nodded and pointed his finger at the raven's beak. His eyes glowed while his lips moved to say something that caused the staircase to reveal itself. As the villains and the 'trapped' Gladiola made their way into the portal, the stone covered their entrance, giving Gladiola's friends the chance to come out of the shadows.

"Seriously?" Alice rolled her eyes. "Can you believe that all the guy had to do was poke the bird's beak and repeat exactly what the grave said?"

"Willy, how long do you think until we go after them?" Art asked as they all gathered by the grave.

"About five minutes." Willy stroke the grave in the dark. "Be careful, Gladiola Trollkonge."


	13. Return To Bergen Town

Trolls: Gladiola Trollkonge

Chapter 13: Return To Bergen Town

Gladiola really hated the return trip.

For one, when they got through the portal, they literally got spit out by what turned out to be a hill monster (which weirded out the princess). Then, she had to struggle with keeping herself on her feet while Chef held her cage and moved it along as they walked across the forest.

Gladiola remembered the stories her parents told her about how the forest hid camouflaging creatures that could go from jolly to bad, but when she did see the fluffy critters, she only saw a bunch of scared animals dissolving into the natural environment when they saw the evil trio marching they way into the forest, not caring to make a break stop or if they stepped on the poor animals. The only thing that mattered to them was that they reached Bergen Town, which they did at dawn.

Seeing her hometown should have been a relief to Gladiola until they stepped through the main gates and she saw the horrors. All the Bergens she had known and befriended since she was born were shackled like slaves and forced to grovel before them. Even the guards, still loyal to the monarchy, looked unhappy at the concept of being forced into bullying their friends. The Trolls were treated far worst: rather than being held altogether in a cage, they were each trapped in individual glass cases like rats waiting to be used for dissection.

The moment they saw them coming, the people screamed.

"You won't get away with this!"

"Witch!"

"Traitor!"

"Murderer!"

"How dare you murder your own?"

"I see you've made excellent work, Dårlig," Chef said with dry appreciation as the young Bergen stepped in and did a bow. The female Troll on his shoulder also did a curtsy. "I didn't actually expect you to saddle up two civilizations at once!"

"You won't fool us again!" A Bergen shouted.

"If you think you can use a similar trick, then you are wrong!" A Troll shouted.

"I must admit, the task was a bit challenging," Dårlig said smoothly while ignoring the complaints of the crowd. "Kidnapping Princess Gladiola has provoked quite a traumatic chain reaction to all the citizens who love her. When we came to demand their complete surrender, they behaved as if you had already come to ruin them all."

"Eesh, some of them even went _suicidal_!" The Troll female nodded. "Why, by the time we came with the cages, around a dozen of the Troll women killed themselves by ripping off their stomachs!"

Gladiola perked in her cage. "Liar. A Troll would never be as insane as to commit such an act!"

"I don't know." Dårlig shrugged. "If a Troll can turn grey from despair..."

"Did you find the Night Soul Tree?" Chef interrupted.

The two lackeys stared at each other in discomfort. Gladiola frowned when she saw those 'stares of discomfort'. They didn't look like the uncomfortable stare you'd give to someone when you were afraid of admitting something. No, it looked more... calculative.

"I'm... afraid we have some bad news," Dårlig said, with anxiety that seemed genuine to others but surprisingly fake to the caged princess.

"Feige, what's going on?" Creek demanded at the Troll female. The latter sighed and freaked.

"I admit, we tried to locate the tree using the map, but when we found the place, all we found was THIS!" She used her hair to pull something out of a small purse that Dårlig carried. Her hair threw on the ground what looked like a pile of dead branches sucked out of wood, dried willow leaves, and a pile of ashes. Everyone gasped when they saw what looked like the remains of a dead tree.

"It appears that the Night Soul Tree was destroyed." Mr. Darwin leaned and picked up something well hidden in the mess. His fingers held up what looked like strands of green hair and blue hair. "Judging by the hair color, it looks like the Bergen and Troll Kings have burned the Night Soul Tree during our absence."

"WHAT?" Chef was enraged.

"That can't be true!" Gladiola snapped and failed to shake against her cage. "My father would never burn a tree, even a dangerous one!"

"If Troll fire created the Tree and Bergen fire destroyed its offspring, then it would make sense that a Bergen and a Troll burning the Night Soul Tree would destroy it." Mr. Darwin got up and looked at Dårlig and Feige. "Have you dared to punish them?"

"We did." Dårlig confessed and pulled something out of his uniform, a pocket-sized urn. He opened it and tossed the content right into the pile of the Night Soul Tree's corpse. This time, Gladiola really felt shattered when she saw the black ash smaller than a grain of sand pouring like a waterfall and its sparkling value forming a familiar colored flower.

"YOU BURNED MY STRIPPED GLADIOLA!" She screamed.

"And by doing that, I burned your chances of saving your people," Dårlig said.

"We thought it was the right thing to do," Feige agreed. "If they destroyed the Night Soul Tree, then we should destroy their precious Torch of Happiness before they can use it against us."

"So let me get this straight," Chef said firmly. "They burn the Night Soul and _you_ decide to burn their stripped gladiola?" The lackeys gave her nervous grins begging for mercy. Chef did not lose her frown but what she did do is firmly hold Dårlig by the spare shoulder. "For once, you did something and I don't feel like hitting you is the reward!"

She thrust the cage up in the air, which made Gladiola wobble and see her friends and subjects look at her. "Pay attention, everyone! We could have done this cleanly, but instead you stuck with violence!" Creek shouted.

"Therefore, returned violence is in store!" Mr. Darwin agreed. "Tomorrow at dawn, we were supposed to hold a new Trollstice feast where everyone would watch the Bergen royalty die from poisoning, but instead it's both the Bergen and the Troll royals who shall die, executed by your selfishness!" He waved a hand at Gladiola. "And the one princess who was unable to save you will be the last one to die, forced to watch her loved ones perish and her Troll fellows die as we will force you Bergens to devour them once again!" The crowd gasped and failed to fight back.

"Dårlig! Feige!" Chef shoved the cage into Dårlig's arms. "Despite how much you exasperated during the last seventeen years, you've proved your loyalty! I know abdicate my position of Chef to you! The kitchen is all yours!"

"You never were the Chef!" Gladiola muttered.

"Eh, whatever keeps the clock ticking," the vile woman said before throwing a cloth over the princess' cage.

 _Meanwhile_

Gladiola's human friends had managed to sneak behind them. Once they had reached the gates of Bergen Town, they took the advantage of everyone being distracted by the game of surrendered princess by climbing up on the crooked and spying from the chimneys.

"I don't get it," Art said while they took turns taking a view with the binoculars that Alice had brought.

"Dude, you're telling me!" Boogie Max, who was having his turn on bird watch, said. "How do these Trolls manage to breathe in those glass cages?"

"Not that! Though I do have to agree with you." Art shook his head. "What I mean is how come the bad guys go all this way to kidnap Gladiola to get to the Night Soul Tree and the welcoming committee declares it destroyed?"

"Yeah." Mattie peaked at the dispersing crowd while Dårlig and Feige headed to the castle with the caged Gladiola and Chef, Creek, and Mr. Darwin headed to the sewage system. She tapped a finger at Boogie Max and pointed him the directions of the villains. "Now that I think about it, how come we didn't see any caged royals with the crowd?"

"Mattie's right." Alice agreed. "Normally, when people accuse you of something, they bring you before a huge crowd when you have no proof of your innocence..."

"Dudes!" Boogie Max lifted his eyes away from the binoculars. "I just saw Mr. Darwin pull up a copy of the map, only his had a red X on it and the riddles weren't on it!"

"But that can't be!" Art waved his phone. "Ours had riddles and no X on it!"

Willy rubbed his chin. "Unless..." He gasped. "Unless they had a _fake_ map!" The others looked at him. "First, they had a copy of the Apothecary Manual _without_ the pages. Then, they get a second copy of the book with pages that look _nothing_ like the ones we have and we were the first to have a look at them. Not to mention that when Licene and Gladiola snooped into Mr. Darwin's office, they just _happen_ to stumble upon a piece of paper that directs the location of the portal in this world and ours."

Alice seemed to have caught where he was going. "And who do we know who constantly does errands for Chef, 'failed' to collect Gladiola at the same time as the Trolls Apothecary Manual, and bought ink remover?"

They frowned in realization as their eyes hit the castle.

 _Later in the night_

Now Gladiola couldn't tell what she hated the most: the fact she was stuck in a cage, unable to figure out what was going on, or the tantalizing smell of good food. For hours now, she heard the same sounds she used to hear whenever she passed the kitchen and the cooks were preparing meals (Gladiola wondered what happened to the current Chef). She didn't know how Dårlig did it, but he made enough racket for someone cooking so fast and pushing the doors to bring the food to the adults up in the dining hall all by himself. And God, the smell of the cooking food was more divine than anything she had smelled!

By the time it was what Gladiola presumed to be 10pm from what the kitchen clock said, she heard and smelled more cooking, only this time Dårlig sounded like he was taking more time to cook. Eventually, she heard the sound of pots clanging into the sink and burning ovens turning off.

"Feige, sweetie!" Dårlig called out. "Dinner's ready!"

Gladiola froze. _Did that Bergen just call that Troll..._ _ **sweetie**_ _?_ This time, she had to see it for herself. She laid on the floor and used her hair to cautiously pull up the bottom of the cloth so that she could see what was going on.

The kitchen table had been cleared of any cooking utensils and covered by a white tablecloth. Laying all over it were silver dishes and bowls full of roasted meat with caramel brown sauce, fancy arugula and olive salad dosed with ranch dressing, martini glasses with floating olives, and a wild berry custard pie. Two cups were full of black oil-colored liquid that came from a wine bottle the size of a Bergen hand. She didn't know what that last one was, but judging by the others' delicious scent, she could tell Dårlig nailed at cooking.

While Dårlig used a match to light a candle on the table and spit on the match before throwing it away, Feige hopped on the table. Gladiola saw that the Troll female had changed her attire to a sun orange wrap dress with a black choker necklace and matching sandals. Blue flowers were braided into her hair. _Now that I think about it_ , Gladiola thought, _why does her complexion look familiar?_

"You really know how to make a feast, don't you, Bergy Wuggy?" Feige said in a teasing voice as she leaned on one of the glasses. Gladiola wanted to gag. _Bergy Wuggy._

"I sure do." He held out his hand and she jumped on it. Dårlig pulled out what looked like bendy straws from his cooking shirt. "Any preferences?"

"The orange one." Feige grabbed it and forced it into one of the black liquid cups while Dårlig grabbed the spare. They both looked at the cups nervously. "So... how hard was it to make it?"

"I had to make it _while_ I was cooking for those jackasses," Dårlig said bitterly. "A good two hours!"

"Gosh!"

"Don't get me started. I hope this is the last time I _ever_ have to grind Troll gemstones!"

Gladiola froze as words echoed back in her head: _a dozen of the Troll women killed themselves by ripping off their stomachs_.

Troll females had Troll gemstones implanted in their stomachs since birth, even Gladiola had an indigo one pierced on her navel while she was being hatched in her flower. If a dozen had died from ripping off their stomachs and Dårlig just happened to have grinded Troll gemstones for his juice, that could only mean one thing.

 _He_ was the one who killed twelve Troll females by ripping off their Troll gemstones, which was fatal to them since pierced gemstones were leashed to the females' metabolism.

Gladiola continued to watch as the duo made a nervous cheers and took cautious sips. They both gagged at the first sips and gagged even more as they forced themselves into drinking the rest of it. The more they drank, the more their mouths begged to spit the stuff out. Twelve sips later, the cups were empty and Dårlig flunked them into the sink and filled his mouth with tap water while Feige took Troll-sized mouthfuls of the pie.

"God, that was foul!" Dårlig gagged.

"Eesh, you're telling me! I feel like I just drank water from the Inner Harbor!" Feige choked and looked at the black bottle. "How long before the transformation?"

Gladiola frowned. _Transformation?_

"A good seven hours." Dårlig took a deep breath and finally recovered from his gagging and went back to the table.

"And once they're dead, we can finally leave? Feige asked hopefully. "We'll finally be free?"

"It will happen, Feige." Dårlig knelt down so that his eyes could be at the same level as Feige. Gladiola was more confused then ever. "Those jackasses will die, I'll be immune and you'll be my height. By the time Chef, Creek, and Mr. Darwin die at dawn, we'll be running out of the palace and meet up with our correspondents. By this hour tomorrow, you and I will finally find our freedom in Villainapolis. _Together._ "

Gladiola wasn't sure about most of the words she heard, but she definetly understood the words 'you'll be my height' and 'together'. The pieces were too quick to place together.

"It was _you!"_ She said. They must have heard her because the sound of upcoming footsteps made Gladiola stand up and lower the curtain before Dårlig threw the curtain off the cage, exposing the little spy before the big Bergen and his small Troll friend sitting on his shoulder.

"It was us what?" Dårlig asked, his eyebrow frowning firmly at the princess.

"Don't play smart with me," Gladiola said. "Kings Gristle and Branch couldn't have burned the Night Soul Tree, not because they couldn't, but because nobody in Bergen Town knew where the Night Soul Tree was hidden. And I saw Chef, Creek, and Mr. Darwin head towards the Southern Sewage system with the map from the Troll Apothecary Manual, which I know can be incorrect because the last time _I_ analyzed the map, it was directing _here_." She twirled her finger around the kitchen surrounding them before pointing at Dårlig and Feige. Their faces were beginning to pale up. "Conclusion. _You_ gave them a fake map. _You_ destroyed the Night Soul Tree. And did you honestly believe that I bought that cheesy speech you gave earlier? C'mon! Trolls _committing suicide?_ "

"I did tell you it was a little bit over the top," Feige shrugged and told Dårlig in the ear.

"I know, but that's the only lie I could come up with!" Dårlig protested. He grumbly shook his head as he pulled a chair and sat on it, confronting the caged Gladiola. "So, you found out our little plan. What are you going to do? Tell everyone?"

"Warn me in advance if you tell Chef first," Feige told Gladiola. "Last thing I want is to hear her fifteen-minute long lecture on the Troll eating balanced diet."

"Uh...no, and yuck!" Gladiola leaned on one of the bars. "I won't tattle."

Dårlig and Feige sighed in relief.

"...Because details still aren't clear. I mean, I just don't understand how two teenagers like you work for such adult crooks to the point of wanting to kill them." She pointed at Dårlig. " _You've_ got cooking skills and ninja-throwing knives skills and you _hate_ working for Chef." She turned to Feige. "Well... for you I'm actually surprised you managed to live long enough without the threat of being eaten by a Bergen."

"Believe me, she lives under the threat every day!" Dårlig spat. "Every day, Chef tries to lure me into eating Feige because she wants me to believe that eating Trolls is the only thing towards happiness, but I just can't eat Feige! She's been my childhood friend ever since she hatched from her flower!" He took a deep breath and out of nowhere, he pulled out a miniature mandolin small enough to rest on his lap. Gladiola recognized it as the mandolin the current royal chef kept in the kitchens when he felt the need to take a break and do a little music. Dårlig plucked on the strings until he got into a quick beat.

Dårlig: _Call me pessimistic, but it's an ugly world we live in._

 _Tyrants always have their slaves, and the boss just has to make things worse from within._

 _She says lil' Bergens should play less than they chew on their own skin_

 _And that if you're not your own boss, than you can never really win._

 _Call me judgmental, but the boss never let me play with the other kids._

 _She says lil' Bergens like me should stay in the kitchen to do her bidding._

 _Scrub 'em floors, clean the dishes, go chop and roast some pigs,_

 _But never go outside to make friends 'cause I'm forbidding._

Feige pulled out a tambourine from her hair and hit on it in a military march fashion.

Feige: _Call me silly, but I hate being the perfect little girl._

 _I don't want others to tell me when I can sing or dance a twirl._

 _The boss says I should never fight because I'm a Troll as fragile as a pearl,_

 _His comments on how I'm bound to get eaten makes me want to hurl._

Both: _So away we go, far from here and there._

 _Our little collaboration may be strange but we don't care,_

 _You and I see eye to eye and that's just fair._

 _So away we go, far from here and there._

 _We take our relationship like a perfect pair_

 _And pursue our dreams by leaving this nightmare._

Dårlig: _But the caged bird can't escape as long as there are still cats._

 _The bosses must be gone and we'll take care of that._

Feige: _The Night Soul Tree is the solution to this non-debatable chat._

 _You heal, I grow, and they go die like rats._

Both: _If you think we're being cruel_

 _Than you'd better go back to school_

 _Because we plan to put an end to this game of pool_

 _And make our merry way, you silly little fool._

 _So away we go, far from here and there._

 _Our little collaboration may be strange but we don't care,_

 _You and I see eye to eye and that's just fair._

 _So away we go, far from here and there._

 _We take our relationship like a perfect pair_

 _And pursue our dreams by leaving this nightmare._

A second after their song was over and they put the instruments away, Gladiola found herself clapping her hands. "I must admit, you guys nailed it when it comes to the bad guy song," Gladiola admitted. "I rate it with four stars and a half out of five."

"Aw, thanks!" Dårlig straightened his shirt. "You know, it's actually the first time we do a..."

"Hey, wait a minute!" Feige jumped off Dårlig's shoulder to face Gladiola, making the latter stiffen in her cage. "Why'd we lose half a point?"

"Look, I get Chef and Co treat you like abused slaves and you want to run away. No lie, I actually find your strange collaboration cute and all... though I still don't understand how you guys managed to get past the friend zone..."

"Fifteen years of growing up alone in the same cramped bedroom with no adult bothering to care for you than to merely boss you around, it helps to connect." Dårlig got up and fetched the bottle containing the black liquid. "Eventually we found out that Chef and Creek would have no use of us after they dispose of your parents and the Bergen royals, which meant that Mr. Darwin could sell us off as slaves to the next sorcerers' convention."

"So naturally, what's better than dogs biting back at the dog snatchers with cold revenge?" Feige smirked.

"Let me guess." Gladiola arched an eyebrow. "You stole the maps from the two Troll Apothecary Manual copies during your trips to the Shop of Mystics. During both trips, you ripped the first pages and hid it while claiming to Chef that the manual came like this, and instead of capturing me at AURA like you asked, you stole the second manual so that you could use ink remover to damage the writings..."

"And forge a false duplicate of the map, misleading the brutes to the south of Bergen Town." Dårlig caressed Feige's hair smoothly, which caused her to blush. "If a Troll can make scrapbooks out of anything, Feige has quite the talent in forgery." He put the bottle down for Gladiola to see. The liquid moved just like blood veins, it weirded her out. "The Night Soul Tree was already withering when Feige and I found it. Deadly powers don't mean that you can't die from a lack of sunlight and water after centuries of being locked away. We only managed to extract this much before burning it..."

"So you framed my father and Gristle?" Gladiola scowled.

"Well we couldn't just go around saying that we did it," Feige said.

"And my stripped gladiola?"

Dårlig rolled his and bent down. His fingers picked on one of the tiles until he lifted it and pushed it aside. The princess felt her hair tingle and her eyes widen as a glow came out of the tile and Dårlig pulled out a potted plant.

"You sneaky trickster!" She said to compliment him as he revealed the true stripped gladiola. Her nose took a large sniff. "I can smell its nectar... Wait, if this is the stripped gladiola, than what was the flower corpse that you showed your boss?"

"Eh." Feige shrugged. "When Mr. Darwin gave us the night off, we snuck to one of the arts and crafts shops in Baltimore, bought a fake gladiola flower, painted it with glittery paint matching your hair... Easy peasy. Did you really think we're really heartless enough to destroy something that can destroy Chef?"

Gladiola was stunned, but before she could say anything, Dårlig held his hand up.

"Look, PG..."

"PG?" Gladiola was baffled.

"Yes, your name's a mouthful. Look, PG, here's the gig: I'm appearing as an extremist in this little plot that Feige and I are developing, but I'm not crazy enough to plunge this town into despair after Chef already forced me to damage the Troll Tree to support her dramatic return. And you got to admit, even if you beat those jackasses, they'll just come back."

Gladiola bit her lip. The Bergen teen had made a point. During the last three decades and eight years, Chef got banished twice and Creek once and yet they still came back. This time, their status of never returning had to become permanent. The princess felt like it wasn't right at first to solve the solution through execution, but since they we're talking about a Bergen who tried to make Trolls a main dish and a Troll who cowardly betrayed his own race and a wizard who seemed to be doing things for his sheer amusement, death seemed like the only option. "So what do you want from me?" She sat down in a Lotus position.

"Here's the plan, PG." Dårlig tapped his fingers while Feige jumped back on his shoulder. "Tomorrow morning, everyone's going to be forced to watch the royal execution in the royal dining hall where the last Trollstice took place. Chef, Creek, and Mr. Darwin will be giving speeches. While they do that, Feige and I will give them cups full of the remaining Night Soul sap disguised as black wine and blackberry juice. They'll call a toast and drink from them all at once.

"The poison will have an immediate effect on their evil veins, and once it happens, you burst out of your cage and use your Torch of Happiness against them via superhero style, save the entire kingdoms and your friends, and as you become queen, you give us a friendly banishment while we sneak off to join our connections and leave Bergen Town, bound to never return!" As he gave Gladiola the verbal description, Feige showed her the scrapbook display, which was pretty large since the Troll actually managed to do her scrapbooking with 3D figures. "Sounds good, PG?"

Gladiola rubbed her chin. "I'm not crazy about murder... but as long as I save my family and the people and you guys finally get your freedom, I guess there's no harm."

"As long as the world goes back to cupcakes and rainbows, we're good, right?" Feige threw the scrapbook back in her hair.

"I suppose."

"It ain't a pretty thing, but sometimes heroes need to make sacrifices for the good of others." Dårlig and Feige handed out a finger and a hand respectively close enough to touch the cage bars. "Deal?"

Gladiola looked unsurely at the finger and hand one last time before giving in and deciding to shake them together at once to seal her people's fate.

She _really_ should have checked to make sure that they weren't crossing their fingers behind her back as they sealed the deal.

 _Minutes later, deep within the layers of the castle_

It was a good thing that the bad guys hadn't thought of giving the local castle janitor the same bonding as his kin. For someone so old, the Bergen actually managed to be anywhere in the castle that people kept mistaking him for a ghost, which cost him quite an amount of lost salary. Fortunately, after stumbling upon him and bribing him with some of Mattie's jeweled metal plates, he guided them through the catacombs of the castle. He really knew the place like the back of his wrinkled hand.

The catacombs themselves were scary. Unlike the crooked buildings of Bergen Town, the walls and floors of these foundations were made of straight flat blue bricks and the ceiling was held up by stone statues of Bergens, commoner and royal, enjoying themselves as they stuffed small Trolls in their mouths. Alice used her flashlight to light the way. Finally, after twenty minutes of walking through this labyrinth, the janitor stopped.

"We're a good thirty feet right below the royal kitchen," he said. "If what you're saying is true, then the Night Soul Tree's hideout must be in the area."

"Or at least the passage." Willy started putting his hands all over the wall nearest him. "You know the place better than we do. What part of the kitchen am I currently under?"

"The door leading to the hallway," the janitor said flatly. They continued to scan the area by rubbing their hands on the walls or even poking the statues. Art even weirded out when he saw a statue of a Bergen in the middle of chewing a Troll. They really needed to revise their architecture.

Mattie touched all over a bunch of bricks until she knocked on a couple and stopped. She knocked again and listened. "Hey guys? Why does this sound hollow?" They gathered by the wall. Alice handed her flashlight to the Bergen janitor and used both hands to tap on the bricks. "This whole area is hollow! I wonder what's inside it?"

"We're in the area just under the kitchen's fireplace," the Bergen janitor said.

"You mean that we have to go down the chimney to find the Night Soul Tree?" Boogie Max asked. "How ironic."

Suddenly, the light coming from the flashlight turned off, leaving them in the dark. "Hey, why'd you..." Before Alice could finish her question, something grabbed her and the others like a rope holding onto cattle. The sound of moving bricks was heard and the humans found themselves being thrown into a chute. As they screamed, the moving bricks were heard again, and they fell and fell until they crash landed onto a pile of ashes and burned leftovers of what once used to be a tree.

"Is everyone alright?" Willy shouted.

Alice coughed a bunch of leaves out of her mouth. "I'm fine! Gag!"

"Dudes, hang on! I got a lighter!" In the dark, Boogie Max managed to flick a flame on. Art handed him the nearest thick branch and Boogie Max burned the top with his lighter, creating a torch. Once they got off their landing area, he bent down to light it with his torch, burning it up like a bonfire and revealing that they were in a dark chamber made of black stones and a ground covered in dirt. No exits could be seen aside from the opening on the ceiling that they fell through.

"Splendid," Mattie muttered. "How the Hell are we going to get out?"

Metal creaking and muffled shouts were heard behind them. They turned and their light showed a group of people. Four of them were Bergens, one a male with an outfit far cleaner and friendlier than Chef's and three that were short but wore crowns on their heads, and each was chained to the wall. Their three companions were by far in the worst condition: chained to extend their limbs in an attempt to rip them off and their Troll hair tied together in one knot to prevent them from using them. And next to them, chained to them, was Licene. All had cloths covering their mouths, muffling their shouts.

"Licene!" Alice was the first to run at them. One by one, she removed the gags from their mouths and used one of her trinkets to pick on their locks, freeing them one by one.

"Thank you!" They all said.

"You must be Gladiola's parents and the Bergen monarchs!" Willy realized before turning to the Bergen in a cooking uniform. "But who are you?"

"The current Chef of the royal family," he said as he rubbed his wrists.

"We must hurry!" Branch helped his wife get up. "Gladiola's in danger!"

"Gee, you don't say." Art rolled his eyes back at the opening. "And how the Hell are we supposed to get up there before Chef decides to..." He paused and gave everyone a cold, stunned look. He waved a finger at the royals and Licene. "Uh, guys? If...you're here... than what does that mean for the execution?"

"It means that Gladiola has been tricked!" Licene said. "Chef and Creek aren't the real bad guys! Dårlig and Feige are!"

"You assumed it to?" Willy asked. "Because we figured out that they might be up to something since they hoarded the real maps and...OK, can somebody please tell me what's going on?"

"Yeah, and why are you all in this dump?" Boogie Max asked.

"After Dårlig and Feige kidnapped me, Chef and Creek sent them to Bergen Town to locate the Night Soul Tree while at the same time getting everyone to turn themselves over unless they wanted Dårlig to slice my neck," Licene said. "But Dårlig played clever and had me pretend to be Gladiola, thus making it easier for them to surrender..."

"I hate to interrupt, Licene, but how can Dårlig have you pretend to be Gladiola?" Willy pinched his nose. "She's barely the size of your fist!"

"Feige is a polyringler!" Peppy said worriedly. "I don't how she managed to learn that technique abandoned by our people, but she can use her hair to change her appearance and others!"

Alice's eyes widened. "Trolls can shapeshift?"

"If they can make wigs big enough for a Bergen to wear and hide them, a polyringler can easily cover her body with her hair and use it to take another's appearance," Poppy said. "If she presses harder, she can even have her hair camouflage her into someone taller. But it's impossible for anyone to master such a technique and yet Feige goes as far as to use her own hair to shapeshift people other than herself!"

"Feige jumped on my head and used her polyringler talent to shape me into Gladiola as well as making Dårlig look like Chef for their scam," Licene said, "and once we got gathered into the kitchen, Feige transformed some of the Bergen cooks into duplicates of us and she and Dårlig took us down the fireplace..."

"Where they chained us and prevented us from doing anything while they took the remaining Night Soul Tree sap and burned it and then left us here!" Branch jumped onto Licene's shoulder, which didn't bother her, since she got used to carrying Trolls on her shoulder.

"We'd better hurry," Licene said. "Apparently Dårlig and Feige want Chef, Creek, and Mr. Darwin to be killed during the execution and make a run for it!"

"What will happen to Gladiola?" Willy asked. "I mean, what could Dårlig and Feige want from her during this... lackey revolution?"

"Something terrible," King Peppy said as he looked at the remaining Night Soul Tree ashes burning away. "I never thought I'd live to see the day when one of my ancestors' worst creations would perish. The Night Soul Tree was confectioned to poison Bergens, grow Trolls to the formers' sizes, and rarely make Bergens immune to the poison."  
"I still don't understand how the poison can also make Bergens immune to it if it's already supposed to kill them," Poppy admitted to her father.

"According to the Troll Apothecary Manual, a Bergen can be immune to the poison if he has a Troll's love or if they are related to the Bergen Chef who put an end to Prince Aster's madness," Peppy explained. "Ever since the incident, the Bergen Chef and his descendants were the only Bergens capable of being immune to the tree's poison even by touching it. But during my first days of reigns, I discovered a loophole written in a tablet hidden in the Wall of Kings. Aster was smart enough to assume the possibility of a Bergen being crazy enough to be immune, so he added a severing spell. If whoever in the Bergen Chef's family drinks the Night Soul Tree sap with the grinded gemstones of twelve female Trolls and his own tears, not only will he guarantee himself permanent immunity, but he will sever his relationship with his family's older generation and thus damn them with death the moment the Torch of Happiness' flames burn them."

"Wait." Willy stopped him. "Are you saying that Dårlig might have drunk the sap and is tricking Gladiola into murdering Chef..." He gasped in horror.

"Dårlig isn't just Chef's lackey! He's HER SON!"


	14. Confronting The Truth

Trolls: Gladiola Trollkonge

Chapter 14: Confronting the Truth

Eighteen years ago, the royal dinning hall hosted the very last Trollstice banquet. On that day, Bergens gave up on eating Trolls by finding their inner happiness, the two species joined, and Chef and Creek were banished.

Now every citizen was either strapped to a chair or stuck in a cage, forced to watch the royal family, chained and gagged, being dragged by the unhappy guards. While Gladiola was still stuck in her cage, she had been placed on the Bergen throne as mockery while the villains stood by the steps, watching eagerly as one of the guards, who seemed to have given into treason, kicked the royals onto the ground and forced them to kneel before Chef, Creek, and Mr. Darwin. Gladiola didn't understand why, but neither her family nor her Bergen friends looked up and gave her a facial expression that said they were overjoyed by her return or despaired by certain execution. Her Troll friends among the crowd did look worried, so why weren't the monarchs.

She tapped her fingers nervously, feeling the Torch of Happiness hiding under her dress and above her spine. Her eyes briefly darted at Dårlig and Feige. The villains' treacherous lackeys played their role nicely, ignoring her as if their conversation from last night never existed. Dårlig stood there holding a silver tray with three different cups holding the disguised poison, and Feige for her part contended with resting on his shoulders.

Gladiola sighed. _Today will be my last and only crime committing,_ she thought. _The world will go back to cupcake and rainbows..._

Finally, the egoistic speeches began. "You poor simple-minded simpletons," Chef clasped her hands together. "Today was supposed to be a clean execution, but because of your defiance, it ill be a gory execution. To symbolize how it is impossible for two different species to be friends, we shall have the monarchs killed before you today and you Bergens to be force-fed with Trolls until only half remain!"

"But first, a little toast of bragging!" Creek added. Chef snickered and snapped her fingers. Dårlig walked over and Feige struggled to lift up the cups with her small hands as she handed them to the villains. This made Gladiola frown. Why didn't Feige just use her hair?

The cups met each other for a cheer and Gladiola watched their throats move as they gulped the entire thing down into the stomach. It was now only a matter of time before the poison would react or they'd threaten to harm her family before she could make her move.

Dårlig hadn't joked. Five seconds after drinking the entire cups' contents, Chef started to choke. Mr. Darwin and Creek both had trouble breathing and soon enough, their veins visibly turned black but in a slow manner.

"We've been tricked!" Mr. Darwin exclaimed while choking. "We just drank the Night Soul Tree poison!"

"WHAT?" Chef and Creek screamed.

"That's it. Party's over!" Gladiola kicked on the lock (man, Feige was even good at building realistic fake locks), jumped out of her cage, and held out the Torch of Happiness, aiming it at the villains. "Give up your evil scheme and your stupid charade of committing suicide!"

"Yeah! Go get them, Gladiola!" Her friend Chandler shouted.

"The princess will save us!" Soon enough, the bound crowd began to cheer. This was a moment of hope for everyone! Right now the image was that the Troll princess was going to put an end to all this and beat the villains. However, the moment Gladiola tried to focus on summoning her Torch's powers, she frowned. Why wasn't she feeling the power? Why weren't any flames showing? She tapped her torch on her palm. Apparently it was low in batteries.

"I don't understand..." She said. "Why isn't it working?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Creek gritted his teeth. "The Torch of Happiness can see right through your chi that you had your ancestor's inherited desire to murder. _You_ aren't worthy of it!" The crowd gasped and Gladiola felt confused glares pinning on her. She felt just as confused. How is it possible that she wasn't worthy of the Torch? She thought that by disposing of the villains, she would be saving her people!

Just then, the doors opened and then the confusion increased. Her human friends were all here, including Licene, but so were the current Bergen Chef and all the monarchs. You can imagine the shock of seeing doubles!

"Gladiola!" Her parents, grandfather, and the rest of the Bergen monarchy ran to hug her one at a time, proving they were the real ones.

"Hang on!" Creek did a time-out sign with his hands. "If you're the real monarchs, than who are the ones we were just about to execute?" He pointed at the fake monarchs. To answer his question, Licene grabbed Branch and swung him while his hair moved like a whip, hitting the fake monarchs and even Dårlig and Feige. Their bodies began to shift into colored hairs that shed and fell to the ground, revealing a bunch of Bergen cooks. The crowd gasped.

"Feige used her polyringler antics to get a bunch of innocent Bergens killed while the real monarchs rotted in the catacombs!" Licene said. "She and Dårlig must have disguised themselves into the crowd in case their plan failed."

Mr. Darwin groaned and struggled to keep himself up by leaning on a wall. "I should have known." He glared at Chef and Creek respectively. "Your own children betrayed you!"

The crowd was more shocked than ever. "Wait!" Gladiola felt her stomach rising as she confronted Chef and Creek herself. "Dårlig and Feige... are _your children_?"

"Technically, Dårlig is _my_ son and Feige is _his_ daughter," Chef corrected.

"But then again, do we really care?" Creek shrugged.

"How on earth is it possible for you to conceive offspring without another of your own species? And why on earth would your own children betray you?" Biggie asked somewhere in the crowd.

"Easy." Mr. Darwin muttered. "Eighteen years ago, Chef and Creek got swallowed by the portal leading to the human world shortly after their banishment." He coughed even more and began spitting out blood. "I collect rare creatures to keep around for fun while I sell off offspring at sorcerer conventions, but when I saw a royal Bergen Chef and a Troll together, I knew I had an opportunity to make more money. With the threat of the human world turning them into plastic or rubber toys, I offered them a proposal they couldn't refuse: in exchange for a spell to keep them alive and my assistance to get their revenge, they would have to use two of my fertility seeds to give me a young Bergen and a young Troll. Dårlig was born first and Feige came a couple years after him."

"And you were planning on selling them shortly after you helped Chef and Creek take over the kingdom!" Gladiola was disgusted. "No wonder it was beyond personal for Dårlig and Feige to want to run away from you! You weren't just jerkass employers, but _abusive parents!_ "

"Big deal!" Chef snapped while her blackening veins made it harder for her to breathe. "But what I really wonder is how these cowards managed to blind us so easily."

"Actually, it's not very complicated," Licene said. "And I will explain from the top for all of you who don't know the entire story. When the duo learned that the employers wanted to use the Night Soul Tree to take over, they decided to use their plan against them. The first time they were sent to fetch the Troll Apothecary Manual, they merely ripped the pages and claimed the book had been like this while they hid the map. They knew that they had to bring the second with a map in it, so after they stole it from us, they bought the ink remover and Feige created a fake map misleading the villains about the whereabouts of the Night Soul Tree.

"However, they knew they needed the Troll Princess herself to use her Torch of Happiness rather than commit the patricide and matricide respectively, so when they were sent to fetch Gladiola back at the same time as finding the second manual, they pretended to just leave us alone while making off with the manual, somewhat sparking some trust in Gladiola. Since they planned on destroying the Night Soul Tree once they got its sap, they built a fake stripped gladiola and hid the real one, leading to the destruction of the fake one as a pretense to get back at the 'royals' for 'ruining Chef and Creek's plans'. Once they came back to Bergen Town, Feige used her powers to shift me into Gladiola and force everyone to surrender. Then she morphed Dårlig into Chef to convince twelve female Trolls to give up their navel gemstones to 'her'.

"With the authentic maps, they found the entrance leading to the Night Soul Tree. Once they gathered the necessities and drenched the tree of its sap, Dårlig and Feige used the Torch of Happiness and a regular torch to burn the whole tree down..."

"Wait a minute!" Chef cut her off. "How is it possible that my son was able to use the Torch of Happiness while the princess couldn't?"

"Easy." Licene scowled. "When Gladiola and I went snooping in Mr. Darwin's office for clues on how to bring her back home, Feige was actually hiding in the bookshelves and made it so that a map leading to the Baltimore portal 'happened to fall on the floor', but in reality she was stalling us so that more of Gladiola's hair would fall off. Once Dårlig collected her hair, he was capable of knitting a glove made out of Gladiola's hair strands, thus holding her genetic code. The moment he held the Torch of Happiness in his gloved hand, the hair made the relic mistake Dårlig for the pure princess, giving him the flames he needed to destroy the princess, then leaving us to rot in the chamber while at the same time 'saving us' from death in their parents' hands." She sighed and took a deep breath. "Problem is, they didn't realize that by using Gladiola's DNA to wield the torch, the stick thinks that she's into arson..."

"So when I held it... it thought I was capable of murder because it knew I agreed to help Dårlig and Feige to kill their parents," Gladiola said silently. Everyone gasped at her. "I'm sorry! They tricked me! They... they told me they just wanted to live free away from them, but to do that..."

"Did you honestly think that killing us with the Torch would be simple?" Mr. Darwin snarled. "The poison is already murdering us, but your relic's flames would have permanently severed the heritage link between Chef, Creek, and their children."

"What? I don't understand!" Creek choked.

"Do you _ever_?" Feige's voice suddenly spoke up drily.

That's when they noticed the guard who seemed to have accepted treason. He looked like he was losing his balance while his hat oddly grew slowly into his size. "Of course!" Gladiola realized. "Feige's transformation is taking into effect!"

And just then, the guard exploded into a thousand pieces of green and blue hair that flew all over the room. A cloud of sparkles disappeared, and as everyone blinked, they saw Dårlig helping the tallest Troll they had ever seen. And by tallest Troll, I mean like Bergen tall. Feige was tall enough to be a Bergen, her wild hair making her look even taller. Her Troll anatomy remained, but her physique did make her fingers leaner, her clothing tight and slightly ripped, and new curves on her chest and superior.

"Wow." Dårlig was the first to react with a whistle. Somewhere in the crowd, Cooper and Chandler pooped cupcakes.

"That...is the biggest Troll I've ever seen," Art said.

"Uh...if Feige just got big, why isn't Creek?" Poppy frowned.

"Easy," Dårlig said. "When we collected the sap from the Night Soul Tree, we divided it in half. One half for us to consume to get immunity and size, the other to pour in regular poison, sealing your fates to die. Then again, things would have turned out so much better if the Torch didn't reject the princess!"

"And why did you need the princess to do the dirty murder for you?" Willy arched an eyebrow. "You could have just murdered them yourselves!"

"Yeah, we could." Feige nodded. "But if the Torch had killed them, we would have, A, been separated from any connection with them, thus making us free, independent individuals who don't have to me constantly reminded of being Chef and Creek's kids, and B, with the princess doing the murder herself, charges wouldn't done upon us."

"I mean, c'mon!" Dårlig snickered. "We're supposed to be the lame lackeys! Would anyone seriously take us for murderers while they could blame the princess for relying on physical assassination to 'save her people'?"

"That is twisted! But quite believable," Creek admitted. He coughed out blood.

"Why?" Chef snarled at her son. "I gave you _life_! This is how you repay me?"

"I'm sorry, but allow me to make the list." Dårlig gave his mother a venomous glare. He walked over to her while at the same time picking up the spear he held while posing as a guard. "Instead of raising me properly, you left me to take care of myself in an environment that could kill a child. You never treated like your own flesh and blood but as a mere servant that you could kick and boss around in the kitchen. You made me sleep in the attic, you never let me have a childhood like the simple, but happy ones human children had. You tried to make me eat Feige, the only friend I had in the cruel world that you brought me in. You were even going to let Mr. Darwin sell me off!" Chef tried to punch him, but the poison was weakening her, so she just fell on the ground, facing Dårlig's feet. "Unlike you, I don't want to conquer. I care little about that wooden chair you seek. Once you die, I can finally go where I please without having your ugly face plaguing my new happy picture!" He gave a small pout before giving a sadistic grin while his foot hammered her back down. "No hard feelings?"

"But Feige!" Creek complained while his daughter joined the teenager Bergen. Gladiola could imagine the fear he was having, facing his now titan-sized daughter (in his point of view). "Why on earth would you kill me? How on earth is your chi cruel enough to kill me, the father who treated you better than Chef treated Dårlig?"

"Yeah, well..." Feige sighed matter-of-factly. "While I am going to miss being spoiled on Christmas, you still spent more time actually complaining 'I should in the lead of the Trolls through Poppy instead of that lame old Branch' instead of with me!" She even made mouthing gestures with her hands and managed to imitate Creek's Australian voice. "Dårlig spent far more time with me than you did, and unlike you adults, he's not even interested about having a crown on his head!"

"I don't even like Mardi Gras or Halloween and they have fake cheap crown knockoffs everywhere!" Dårlig agreed. "So yeah, teenage rebellion seemed to be the best deal for us."

"And consummating your relationship the moment you escaped our clutches," Mr. Darwin guessed.

"Don't talk rubbish," Chef muttered.

"I hate to break it to you, but the only way the poison could make Dårlig immune to it other than being your kid is by being loved by a Troll," Gladiola said.

"Wait!" Alice gagged and exchanged pointed fingers between Feige and Dårlig. "Are you two... _dating?_ "

"Is that a problem?" Dårlig arched an eyebrow. Feige went on to hug him by the arm, giving a similar glare to the human. It was evident that these two, despite the racial difference and the fact that their creators couldn't even stand each other, functioned like a peculiarly designed oil machine. They both had dangerously cunning minds and unique physical capacities that they applied evenly to concoct their own schemes. The couple was already dangerous when composed of one bad Bergen and a small, but treacherous Troll.

Now they were evenly matched in size.

"Well we did have the small size problem," Dårlig ended up saying. "That's why it was a whole lot better to have each other at our sides than one sitting on the other's shoulder."

"How romantic." Gladiola said sourly. "And I suppose that now you're going to nicely put the spear down and make your merry way? We can both agree that you don't want to miss out on your correspondents picking you up for your exile."

"Yes, the banishment you agreed to give us _if_ things went according to our deal and you killed our parents!" Dårlig said in a correcting tone. "Unfortunately, since you couldn't, I'm afraid we'll have to go with the classic running away with homicide weighing us shamefully for the rest of our lives. Feige."

Feige didn't hesitate. Her hair grew into three large and massive tentacles that wrapped up around Chef, Creek, and Mr. Darwin. Like vicious boa constrictors trapping preys in their coils, they made the villains suffocate even more.

"Stop it!" Gladiola said. "You poisoned them already! Isn't that enough?"

"Not enough to make up for seventeen years of physical and mental abuse!" Dårlig snarled.

"Guards! Seize them!" Gristle ordered his guards. None of them hesitated and ran at the duo, aiming their spears right at them. Dårlig instantly threw a bunch of knives at a few guards, pinning them to the nearest walls the same way he pinned Licene, and Feige managed to get a few large strands on the back of her head to grab the other guards by the throats and swing them out the window.

"You've done enough!" Gladiola threw her hair at Feige's right wrist, disabling her balance but not keeping her from squeezing the other villains to death.

"We've got your back, Gladiola!" Licene and Willy grabbed Gladiola's hair and helped the Troll Princess pull Feige into a vicious tug of war battle.

It seemed like they were winning until Dårlig used the spear he was holding to successfully slice Gladiola's hair in half.


	15. A Poisonous Ending

Trolls: Gladiola Trollkonge

Chapter 15: A Poisonous Ending

No gasps or screams this time.

Even Chef and Creek, who were still being constricted, were shocked.

For Gladiola, it was like the world had suddenly exploded around her. Every piece of falling world debris formed the shower of blue and pink hair strands flying.

A Troll's pride was in his or her long hair standing tall and long, but when Gladiola felt the blade saw through her strands, making them lose their stretch, she saw her humiliation. When her remaining hair went back to normal, she felt them falling downward from her head while the cut ones fell onto the carpeted floor. It was as if she had been murdered and the carpet was now stained with colorful blood.

"You... you..." She stammered while Dårlig scratched his nails on the blade as if he were filing them. "You cut my hair..."

"Seriously?" Dårlig paused in his scratching. "Out of all the deeds I committed today, _this_ is the one that concerns you the most? Geez!"

"That does it!" Willy got angry and threw his fist at Dårlig's cheek. It did not affect the latter, but for some reason, Willy found himself struggling to stand up. Eventually, the other humans (except Mr. Darwin, but who cares) were clutching their knees and gasping for air.

"What's happening to them?" Glows Ruby, one of Gladiola's Troll friends, asked. "They look like they're having a bad case of dehydration."

"Licene!" Gladiola rushed to her friend when the latter collapsed on the floor. She touched the human's skin and felt the warmth suddenly slowing down. "What..."

"It's cruel, isn't it," Dårlig said. And this time, he said it with genuine sympathy and not sadistic amusement, like he actually felt bad. "The two opposite dimensions we live in. With humans, they think we're a work of fiction, so staying there even for a day will turn us into fiction. And with us, the humans just seem to be a bad dream that need to be flushed away. While you were almost going to turn into a plastic Troll doll by being in the human world, they're losing their vital energy from being in a 'non-existent world'. I'd say you only have until sundown to bring them back to the portal or else they die." He waved his hand to Feige. She nodded and let the villains drop from her hairy coils, leaving their final breaths of air silently echoing in the room.

Chef, Creek, and Mr. Darwin, were as dead as squished stinkbugs.

"We're done with this place," she said. She followed Dårlig out to the door.

"You're honestly just going to leave?" Gladiola looked up from Licene with a cold stare. "Not after what you just did..."

"Compared to the hundreds of dead Trolls my mother has inflicted for years?" Dårlig looked back at her sharply. "I know what she's done, I've seen the wall that the Bergens now have to commemorate those deaths, she was capable of regicide, and she wanted nothing of _me._ And don't play smart. I know she hate most of your father's family."

More gasps were heard. Even Branch looked at Gladiola with a hurt expression. "You knew about this?"

"I... kind of figured it out while I was turning myself in?" She said meekly before shaking her head. "But it's not the point!"

"Right." Feige opened the door. "Yet, I can't help but remember. The day we kidnapped you... Dårlig, remind me again, but didn't the Troll King demand that P.G specifically go hide in the castle while they dealt with your mom?"

"Yes." Dårlig nodded.

"And if I remember well, she _directly_ disobeyed and that caused her to get captured by me!" Feige feigned to gasp and pointed at Gladiola. "Translation, it's your fault!"

" _My_ fault?" Gladiola snarled.

"Gladiola..." The princess turned to look at her father, who now had a disappointed, angry look in his eyes. "Was it true when Cooper told me that you purposely ran off to join in while I ordered you to be taken to the castle?"

"I couldn't just stand there, Dad!" She protested.

"No, because I told you not to! Your security came first, and you disobeying is what caused you to be in this mess!"

"I'm not particularly envious," Dårlig said with a shrug. "I mean, perhaps it was better that Chef never saw me as her son. Just see your state, P.G. A princess born from the saviors of all Trolls and Bergens, adored by all those who surround her, and the promised gift of a great era with her as queen! The only needle in this perfectly organized haystack is that because of the immense pride and fantasy she lives in, she thinks that being an active princess saving the day will get her all the love and admiration she deserves and be just like her parents!" He lost his shrug and looked bitterly at Gladiola. "If living in a world of cupcakes and rainbows has turned you, a child of heroes, into a spoiled brat, than I'm glad that I only have one rainbow in the grey world I live in."

He turned to Feige. "C'mon. Our pickup ride is arriving in a few minutes. I don't want to stay in this mediocre town."

"Bergen Town, mediocre?" Gristle scowled.

"We got better places to go, and honestly, I highly doubt we could stay here after what happened today. So long!" Feige slammed the door behind them. Gladiola now felt her stomach boiling. She got up and made her way to the door.

"Young lady, get back here!" Branch demanded.

"I have to go after them!" Gladiola did not look back at her father.

Gristle ordered the guards to go after the fiends, but the first mistake they did was to open the door, giving Gladiola the opportunity to make a run for it. But instead of heading for the nearest castle exit, she made her way to the kitchen. But the moment she arrived, she found herself unable to push the door open due to her small size.

"Gladiola? What are you doing?" Calico had arrived. "I thought you said you wanted to go after the crooks."

"I am, but to do that, I need to fetch something from the kitchen!"

Calico, despite her confusion, gave in and pushed the door open for her friend. The Troll princess took no hesitation and made a run for the fireplace. She frantically tapped on the stones forming the chimney until she hit one on the bottom left corner. The fireplace made a bunch of creaking noises and the cauldron suddenly slid over. Gladiola and Calico cautiously walked over and saw a dark tunnel leading downward. On the side was a metal stepladder hammered onto the wall, and squeezed right inside the first step was a familiar bottle.

"Calico, can you grab that for me?" Gladiola asked.

"Isn't it early to drink?" Calico asked in confusion. She grabbed the bottle and put it on the tiled floor. Gladiola quickly shook it.

"Yes! There's still enough Night Soul Tree poison!" She uncorked it.

"Night Soul... Gladiola, are you mad?" Calico exclaimed.

"It's the only way for me to catch up to Dårlig and Feige!" Gladiola grabbed the bottle by the neck.

"Stop! If you drink from it, you'll never be able to turn back into a Troll!"

"I'm a Troll no matter what size I am!" And the last remains of Night Soul Tree sap fell right into Gladiola's esophagus.

 _Minutes later_

The guards, monarchs, and humans managed to catch up with the crooks while others were dealing with freeing the citizens. Dårlig and Feige were found waiting by the Troll Tree, checking their wristwatches every other five minutes.

"Are they late or are we early?" Feige grumbled. Dårlig turned his head and saw the locals surrounding them. He scowled and prepared to grab his knife.

"For the last time, we're not interested in your crummy little town!" He snapped. "We just want to leave the moment our ride comes to pick us up!"

"You... brought this on... yourself..." Willy gasped while a guard carried him by the arm.

"Look, we get that you've suffered," Queen Poppy tried to be diplomatic, "but can we at least try talk things out peacefully before giving you a peaceful exile?"

"Isn't that what we were doing?" Feige frowned at Dårlig. "Self-exile?"

"It's a simple-minded community, Feige" Dårlig replied matter-of-factly. "They don't understand suffering the way we..."

An explosion was heard. "Dude... what was that?" Boogie Max exclaimed. They all looked up and saw smoke coming from the area where the kitchen was located in the royal palace. A light of blue and pink glimmered from the smoke and seemingly enlarged, causing everyone to realize that it was actually heading towards them. They dispersed, leaving room for the thing to crash into and burn whatever was left of the Troll Tree. When the light clear, even Dårlig and Feige gasped as the flames revealed an angry Gladiola, still with short hair now dropping to her shoulders, but now as tall as Feige now was.

"Oh no..." King Peppy gasped.

"P.G, tell me you _didn't_!" Dårlig put an arm in front of Feige in protection while the latter kept looking hopefully at the sky. "Please tell me that you didn't drink the poison!"

"Why? You have nothing but yourself to blame!" Gladiola said coldly. She walked down and easily ripped off one of the ancient Troll cage bars that still hung around. Her grasp tightened, causing her new staff to burn. She didn't seem to notice that the others were backing away.

"P.G, do you know at all what happens to stripped gladiola Trolls when they consume the Night Soul Tree? Don't you know what happened to your ancestor Aster?" Dårlig cautiously backed away. "While the other Trolls grew in size and mild nastiness, Aster lost all niceness. He became cold and bitter and emotionless. Why do you think that after Chef's ancestor ate him, the royal Bergen Chef legacy has inherited a pinch of nastiness that other Bergens don't have?"

"I don't care!" Gladiola prepared to lift her club and smack them with it, much to her family and friends' horror. The wind suddenly agitated and a purple vortex appeared above them. Seeing the thing above his head and after looking at the terrified audience, especially the humans wearing out of energy, Dårlig looked back at Gladiola with a determined scowl. As he continued to shield Feige, his spare hand pulled out something from his shirt and tossed it at Gladiola. The latter instantly caught and stared at the black thing.

"You remember this from the human world, right?" Dårlig said. "It's the thing that humans kill each with. A gun." He gesture his hand from him to the others. "You're not like me, Gladiola. You aren't cold and bitter. If you want to be colorful on the outside and gray on the inside for the rest of your life, than kill me and lose your family and friends. If not, go back to your place, save your human friends from death at the cost of never seeing them again, and you have my word that Feige and I will leave and _never_ return!"

Feige hugged Dårlig from behind. "Dårlig..."

"Patience," he said. The princess looked like she was hesitating in between her rage. "But she'll have to go through me before reaching you."

That was the last straw. A tear fell down Gladiola's cheeks and she angrily tossed away the burned down club and gun, leading her to falling on her knees and crying. While her now tiny family and the Bergen royals rushed to console her, the sky vortex spit something out: a human van painted white with the black logo PENGUINS INC printed on it. It parked right in front of Dårlig and Feige.

The driver's window lowered, revealing a white human teen with black-gelled hair and orange dyes. "Are you the correspondence dubbed Dårlig Bergen and Feige Blomstroll, signed up for an immigration to Villainapolis?" He asked.

"That would be us." Dårlig nodded. The driver tilted his head and snapped his fingers. A side door popped open and a ginger haired girl in a black-and-white suite greeted them.

"Hop in," she said.

"Gladly." Dårlig helped Feige climb up the van and get installed. Right when Gladiola lifted her head up, the Bergen stepped inside the vehicle and gave her one last cold look.

"You'd _better_ never show your faces here again," she said coldly.

"And you'd better not turn gray." He slammed the door behind him. The van took off and disappeared into the vortex before it evaporated into thin air. Gladiola dried her tears and shoved everyone away.

"You'd better get them back to the portal," she said, referring to the humans.

"Gladiola..." Licene began until Gladiola suddenly turned and screamed at her.

"Maybe if you had just let me drown back at the Harbor, none of this would have happened!" She howled. To everyone's horror, she spat on the ground. "What made me think I could ever trust you humans?"

The humans looked visibly upset at her, Licene and Willy the worst. "But..." Willy stammered, "We only did it because we cared about you..."

" _Right!_ " The princess gave him the worst bitter response ever. "Even if we weren't from two different dimensions, there's _no_ possible way that we could have functioned!" She stomped the ground and ran off to the castle, leaving them stupefied.

"I'm afraid we must return you to your home world," Peppy told the humans sadly.

 _Later in the night_

The good part was, no Troll turned gray. The bad part was, Gladiola refused to speak to anyone. Calico gave her a large spare room in the castle to calm down, but that meant locking herself up and not coming out. Even her own parents couldn't sing her for comfort.

"What will happen to Gladiola now?" Calico asked. She and the other royals were gathered in the meeting room, either trying to figure out a solution to their problem or drinking to ease their minds. "I mean, she won't turn grey, right?"

"She's a stripped gladiola Troll, she can't lose her physical colors..." Peppy looked hesitantly at Branch, who was clenching his hair in frustration at his failure of being there for his child while his wife tried to comfort him. "But she might get rather... cynical, and unfortunately, it's only when she regains faith in herself that she gets her inner colors back."

"I feel awful for the humans," Bridget said. "I mean, we were able to bring them back to the portal and tell us the whole thing that happened back in their world, but still..."

"I think the Licene girl and Willy boy are going to have it the hardest," Poppy admitted. "I mean, Licene was like my daughter's human best friend and Willy actually _liked_ Gladiola."

"Ouch," Gristle grimaced.

"So, aside from the entire Gladiola problem and the fact that Dårlig and Feige went out on their own, what do we do now?" Calico asked.

Peppy sighed. "I fear that the best thing we can do now... is wait."

The royals sighed in agreement, Gladiola sobbed in her room as the rain fell upon Bergen Town, and the underground roots of the dead Troll Tree suddenly began to turn dark.

The End

Trailer for upcoming fanfiction:

 _proudly presents_

A scene featuring a man in front of a willow tree with hanging illuminating bottles...

 _From the author who brought you TROLLS: GLADIOLA TROLLKONGE..._

Brief flashback of Gladiola singing back in Chapter Two...

 _A city of opportunities..._

A great view of Villainapolis looking at the bay at sunrise...

 _Two world trapped as one..._

A hand silhouette shadowing a bunch of screaming Trolls and Bergens... Dark spider webs covering the streets of Villainapolis...

 _And to save the day..._

A rainbow fire is overwhelming a dark giant...

 _A Bergen and a Troll?_

Sean Abyss: Since when do Bergens date Trolls without, you know...

Feige: Eating them?

Sean: Yeah.

Dårlig: Let's just say it's a seventeen years thing.

 _Dårlig and Feige!_

Madleb Arerto: A _vision_ of **THE FUTURE!**

 _Everyone's favorite unlikely duo..._

Cue to Dårlig falling in a puddle of mud and Feige getting caught on a pirate's ship.

 _Is back..._

Dårlig: I never asked to be dragged in this!

 _...In a forever life-changing adventure!_

Sheriff Shan Yu: People are disappearing!

Queen Poppy: The Troll gemstones are missing!

Dårlig (lifting up his sunglasses while still hiding behind a newspaper): Found it!

 _With new characters..._

Madleb Arerto: I see things differently than other people! It's what makes me unique!

Sean: Yeah, and my mom could be a showgirl at Las Vicegas!

Genny Kowalski: You really have parental issues.

Willywaffle Wonka: For all the world's whipped cream, I had to be stuck with _you_!

 _With new original songs brought to you by Emersonian..._

An unknown duet singing while Dårlig and Feige are dancing under the stars, Oompa-Loompas swing dancing with Trolls, and the hit star Kory singing at a concert.

Kory: I'm a dark shooting star

And you see me fly from so afar.

I'm off to a whole new start,

And we'll never ever be apart.

 _With returning characters Dårlig..._

Dårlig: I get it! I'm an evil Bergen! Can I go now?

 _Feige..._

Feige: Yeah, he's a lot more brutal when I'm not around. You can say I'm his stress ball.

... _and Princess Gladiola._

Gladiola: Do you ever feel like you're a failure who can never make everyone happy?

Willywaffle: Depends on what makes _you_ happy.

He opens a door leading them to a colorful valley.

 _New characters like Sean Abyss..._

Sean (while running away from a bunch of humanoid rats): I JUST DIDN'T WANT TO DO TODAY'S LAUNDRY!

 _Genny Kowalski..._

Genny (while taking notes in a book and toying with her abacus): This is one discovery that will hit the history books!

 _Willywaffle Wonka..._

Dårlig: I can't believe that the number one con artist in this town is a drunk ex-chocolatier heir!

Willywaffle: And you're the son of a dead sadistic Troll hunter Bergen chef, and yet here we are.

 _Madleb Arerto..._

Madleb: Just because I'm blind doesn't mean that I don't have big visions for the future!

 _...and pop star Kory._

Kory (while making camera gestures with her fingers at Dårlig and Feige): Oh yeah, I can see your colors as a great light show effect!

King Branch: What?

 _Soon, it will take all the strength..._

Dårlig pushes aside a large stone leading to a tunnel.

Genny: Why are Troll children disappearing as well as disappearances and gemstones thefts in Villainapolis?

Sean: Maybe Black Friday got pushed back to a few more months. (Crickets chirp and everyone stares at him.) What?

 _All the courage..._

Dårlig: I don't want to take part in any of this!

Gladiola: Frankly, it all started because of you!

Dårlig: Exactly! Would it change anything if I ended up saving the day? No!

 _All the heart..._

Feige: You know how much you mean to me, right?

Dårlig: Feige, I could never have a life without you.

 _Of great heroes!_

Willywaffle (as he curtsies and puts his hat back on): Yeah, that's a little over the top.

 _Coming up soon, TROLLS- DÅRLIG AND FEIGE, a fanfiction story that no one will see coming._

Feige: It's like a dream life scrapbook opening up and fulfilling our dreams into a reality!

Dårlig: _Man_ am I fan of your optimism!


End file.
